“One of the most theatrical singers in rock music, he mugged and mimed his way through the songs, accentuating his tortured singing with the persona of a circus ringleader or a mad televangelist,” reported the man from the i>Arizona Republic. “And with stage props. He performed much of the set standing on a wooden riser, which was coated with some sort of powder. The stage set, a sort of junkyard of antique loudspeakers, only accentuated the trash-can sound of the band and the apocalyptic feel of the show.”

The rival Phoenix New Times gushed that: “Waits did the near-impossible and lived up to the great expectations, sweating through his gray suit as he worked himself and his top-drawer band through the paces for two-plus hours. The guy is a performance artist of the highest rank, a kabuki with a bowler hat, a Delta bluesman not afraid to be romantic, a cynic with a heart of gold.”

Elsewhere, the Los Angeles Times opined that, “The America in Tom Waits' head is certainly strange, but it remains a delightful place to spend an evening”; Rolling Stone calls him “one of the last remaining character actors in American music – a self-proclaimed moonlighting thespian who’s always known that music is another kind of theatre”; and Associated Press commended him for “packing more than two dozen tunes into a set that was sure to satisfy any fans that made the trip.”

Those gigs in the Phoenix Park are going to be killer!

Tom Waits plays The Rat Cellar at Phoenix Park on July 30, 31 and August 1. The three shows will be his first Dublin dates since the early '80s

The Hot Press Newsdesk