Tom Waits’ to-date most recent album, 2011’s Bad As Me, may seem to be one of his most low-stakes efforts. Lacking a theatrical tie-in (Franks Wild Years, The Black Rider, Alice, Blood Money) or a thematic through-line (Bone Machine, Real Gone), and sonically mellower than its immediate predecessors — there’s a lot of blues here, and some fairly straightforward singing — it may seem on first listen like he’s out of ideas and is just “doing the ‘Tom Waits’ thing” for an hour. But the hard-charging R&B of the opening “Chicago” (about the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the south) and the almost rockabilly “Get Lost” have a jumpy energy he hasn’t manifested since Rain Dogs, and the title track is a self-celebratory anthem for the character he’s been inhabiting for decades. Musically, the stinging guitars, wailing harmonica, and burly horns, not to mention the upright bass and slapping backbeat are like an alternate world version of urban blues, and Waits’ vocal debt to Howlin’ Wolf has never been more obvious. Along with Rain Dogs, this could be the album to play for a Waits newcomer.