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T Bone Burnett's Tooth of Crime Release

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T Bone's New Album, Tooth Of Crime To Be Released May 13 On Nonesuch

T Bone's new album is an outgrowth of a long-running collaboration with playwright Sam Shepard that began with the 1996 musical staging of his noted play Tooth of Crime (Second Dance) in New York. The songs are distillations of modern conflicts and personal drama in a modern hyper-reality. Following Burnett's highly praised 2006 album The True False Identity, this new collection is the realization of years of work to fully capture the inspiration of Shepard's forceful ideas.

Burnett, best known as producer to the stars (Robert Plant/Alison Krauss, John Mellencamp) and curator of soundtracks (The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), started writing these songs years ago for a revamped production of Sam Shepard's 1972 play of the same name, about a washed-up rock star. Only bits were used, and Burnett didn't finish the songs until recently.

The bluesy result bristles with echoing spy-movie guitars, clattering layers of percussion and trippy, effects-altered vocals -- Burnett pushes his trademark three-dimensional production into an almost hallucinatory vividness. And the lyrics are nearly as evocative, with Burnett issuing detective-novel threats “I can stir you like a Bloody Mary" and spinning dystopian sci-fi fantasies “I was conceived in a behavior station, light-years from civilization". But too often, on songs such as the droney “Dope Island" (a duet with ex Sam Phillips), Burnett's melodies veer between off-puttingly strange and nonexistent. Where's Roy when you need him?

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