Extremely Cool

EXTREMELY COOL is right. Not every Charlie-come-lately touting his second album can boast an endorsement from Willie Dixon on the cover, credit executive production duties to Johnny Depp, and feature major contributions in the songwriting, production and vocal departments from none other than Tom Waits. Mr. Weiss is connected.

But he also has pedigree. In spades. A legend in his own lunchtime (quite literally - there's a booth in the Kibbitz Room at Canter's Deli in LA named after him), Weiss' first album came out as far back as 1981 and he's played with the likes of Dixon, Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins. In the late '70s he was also a stalwart of the early alternative singer-songwriter scene based in the (now defunct) Tropicana motel in West Hollywood, where contemporaries included Waits and Rickie Lee Jones, who namechecked the singer in her first hit 'Chuck E's In Love'.

But while the Chuck is undoubtedly a character, boasting a great barrelhouse brawl of a bawl, this album will undoubtedly attract the attentions of Waits-watchers who can't hold out for the master's return any longer. For sure, Uncle Tom's scrawl is all over Extremely Cool, in the detuned floor toms, fucked up delivery and Dr. John-on-peyote feel of 'Devil With The Blue Suede Shoes' (recently used in Depp's directorial debut The Brave); the spastic Beefheart blues of 'Pygmy Farm'; the teary-beery balladry of 'It Rains On Me' (which is Bone Machine down to a chicken-bone); or the brilliant gibberish of 'Do You Know What I Idi Amin'. You've got the picture - all we're missing is Jim Jarmusch filming the whole shebang on Super-8.

Often albums that start out this promising get corny at the halfway mark, usually due to the producer giving the 'taters too much of the fire and boiling the crunch out of the greens. And sure, there are a couple of superfluous routines on here, mainly 'Jimmy Would' and 'Rocking In The Kibbitz Room', both of which fall on the wrong side of the line that divides orthodox from out-of it. But, all things considered, this dishevelled rebel who "sings like the devil is chasing him" (according to Waits) can proudly stand in the same room as J. Fogerty, whose bayou stew is often effortlessly recreated here by players like Rick Vito and Jim Christie, most notably on 'Just Don't Care'.

To sum up, this one was so good on first listening, it made me suspicious enough to play it a fistful of times just to check. Some of these wrinkly old s.o.b.'s make it sound so easy.