Photo by Anton Corbijn

Tom Waits is a born storyteller who loves a good yarn, and like the fast-talking characters who populate his songs, you're never quite sure if he's on the level. "The truth is overrated," he said during this conversation, and you get the feeling those are words he lives by.

Waits is supporting a new album, Bad as Me, which is out next week. His last proper full-length (not counting 2006's three-disc set, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards) was 2004's Real Gone, but this collection feels like a very different beast. Where Real Gone was noisy and harsh, Bad as Me is a batch of short, intensely focused songs that have many distinctive production elements and a few new wrinkles. There are noisy political songs, tender ballads, extended jokes. Crafting shorter tracks was a conscious decision suggested by Waits' wife and collaborator, Kathleen Brennan: "Get in, get out. No fucking around."

We spoke with Waits via telephone from California. When we asked where he was, he claimed to be at the barber shop. We couldn't hear any clippers in the background.

"Songs are pretty easy.

They are small, they are modular, they are about as big as a bagel."

Pitchfork: Is the internet a big part of your life?

Tom Waits: No. I mean, it's necessary, but it's not really part of my world. It's robots, right? They are taking over the world. What is the biggest enemy of a computer?

Pitchfork: I'm going to say water.

TW: There you go. Slowly, their goal is to eliminate all the water on Earth so they can just hum in a room somewhere with each other, generating information. Right now we're part of their plan because we're helping them promote and become more popular, but eventually they'll kill us off.

Pitchfork: Right now I'm only able to listen to your album in front of my computer because of this promo stream thing I have.

TW: Oh, sorry about that.

Pitchfork: Do you ever think about how the ways that we listen to music has changed so much?

TW: Yeah. People record on a laptop and then listen to it back on a speaker the size of a dime. There's a certain fast-food approach to the whole music thing that's changed the role it plays for us all. You are doing it while you are doing other things. Not that that is new-- people have had music on in the background as long as there has been music.

Pitchfork: It's been a little while since you put out an album that's all new music. Is there a point where you say, "It's time to make a record," or is it something you are always chipping away at?

TW: It's not a science. Sometimes it forms like a weather system. It gathers, as they say. When it's done, you can reach up there and pull it down, maybe. But most people want the world to collaborate with them in some way with regard to what they do. Songs are pretty easy. They are small, they are modular, they are about as big as a bagel. They are easy to build. Films are overwhelming in their magnitude and scope. By comparison, a lot of film directors wish they were writing songs because you can do it while getting your hair cut.

Photo by Anton Corbijn

Pitchfork: Are you someone who writes songs by making demos or recording things as you go?

TW: If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal. The drama around even sitting in the car and singing into a tape recorder that's as big as your hand-- waiting until it's very quiet, doing your thing, and then playing it back and hoping you like it-- is the same basic anatomy as when you're in the recording studio, really. Sometimes it's better that way because some of the pressure is off and you can pretend it's throwaway.

It's like what they say about Chinese food: All this preparation and it's gone in a half an hour. How do you think the people in the kitchen feel? Then you got the dishes. But there are dishes that go along with every project. Now, I'm not in the studio dancing around or writing songs, having fun. I'm doing the dishes.

"This whole division between genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic,

it ignores the most important component."

Pitchfork: Is the car generally a place to write for you?

TW: A good one. You're enclosed, you're alone, you're quiet. Perfect. There's a feeling of a vanishing point. And you're moving, like a song moves as it's going through the tape machine. It's like combing your hair with the highway.

Pitchfork: Do you ever take drives just for that purpose?

TW: Oh god, yeah. But sometimes you just bring it with you. I don't really like listening to the radio so much. Everything's so compartmentalized now with all this satellite radio. It bugs the shit out of me. But I like Bob [Dylan]'s Theme Time Radio Hour though. That was really how radio used to be when I was a teenager. You had disc jockeys who were literally able to pick a theme: [impersonating Dylan] "Roses, man. This song's about roses. White roses. Thorns of roses."

Talking about genre overlap or mixing, the vocal styling on the Four Tops' "Reach Out I'll Be There"-- [sings] "When you feel lost and about to give up/ 'Cause your life just ain't good enough... Look over your shoulder"-- he was doing Bob Dylan. Because, at that time, "Like a Rolling Stone" was a big hit. And it was on the airwaves alongside everybody else that was happening at the time. It was a really beautiful thing. Culture is a living thing. It has to be allowed to be exposed to things without it being an accident.

Pitchfork: What was the radio station when you were a kid?

TW: KFWB. I don't remember where that was. But, as a musician, it was inspiring because you were hearing the connections between songs. It was more like if you sat around at home for a couple hours and said, "Let's just play records and entertain each other." There's something very organic about that. I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.

Pitchfork: The songs on Bad as Me are mostly compact. In some ways they kind of feel like singles.

TW: My wife Kathleen wanted to do 12 three-minute songs. Get in, get out. No fucking around. Because people don't have a lot of time. The way I think is more like, "Oh, you got time for 19 songs on there? Put 19 songs on there, baby." She says," No, no, no. Twelve." Like the eggs, 12. You can do a lot in two minutes. So I'm starting to get more economical as I go. Don't overstate, don't restate.

Listen to "Back in the Crowd" from Bad as Me:

Tom Waits: Back in the Crowd (via SoundCloud)

Pitchfork: There's a song on the album that I like very much called "Back in the Crowd", and it's almost disarming in its simplicity. You've certainly had a lot of straightforward, stripped-down songs over the years, but what's the arrangement process like for you now?

TW: Well, that song was an attempt at some of the-- you know what they call it-- Spanish Tinge. It's actually a musical category, like "Under the Boardwalk" is Spanish Tinge. "It's Over" by Roy Orbison, Spanish Tinge. It was done in the 60s. You can still hear it, but most people don't even know that expression.

[Los Lobos' David Hidalgo] put castanets and claves on it-- you know [imitates Spanish Tinge]-- but this was a little more subtle. My wife had this melody on a tape recorder, just something she sang in the car or wherever, all by herself-- [sings a melody]. Like that. And I just rescued it from oblivion. Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like "Chicago" is a very musical sounding name.

"It's weird talking about really funky old neighborhoods that you haven't been to in a while. There's this corner of 9th and Hennepin in Minneapolis.

It used to spell trouble; now it spells sandals and yogurt."

Pitchfork: You lived in Chicago at one point?

TW: Yeah, for a little bit. We did that play at Briar Street [Frank's Wild Years, which had a run in the 80s]. And I used to go there in the early 70s, used to play at Belmont and Sheffield. There was an old Latin club called the Quiet Knight. It was under the El. It had a huge staircase that went straight up, like four flights. I used to open a show for Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Richard Harding was the owner. Eddie Balchowsky, a painter, worked for Richard. Very interesting group of people.

There was a cafe called the Victoria. There was a hotel called the Wilmont. I was very acquainted with that piece of Chicago. They had these old Cadillacs at the airport, and a guy leaning up against it, saying, "You want a ride?" He's not a limo driver, he just has a Caddy. He would bring me into town, drop me [at the hotel]. It was probably like 30 bucks a night. It was a great little neighborhood, I don't know what it's like now.

It's weird talking about really funky old neighborhoods that you haven't been to in a while. There's this corner of 9th and Hennepin in Minneapolis. It used to be a really dangerous part of town. It used to spell trouble; now it spells sandals and yogurt. So maybe Belmont and Sheffield is like that, too: "Belmont and Sheffield? Oh yeah. That unisex hair place down there? We go there sometimes. I took yoga down there for a while."

Listen to the title track from Bad as Me:

Tom Waits: Bad as Me (via SoundCloud)

Pitchfork: Keith Richards plays guitar and sings on this album. How far do you go back with him?

TW: Rain Dogs. I was being ridiculous. First of all, my wife Kathleen said, "Why don't you get Keith Richards on here? You love him. You love what he does. We're in New York and he lives in New York." And I go, "Oh, I gotta listen to this shit."

So then I was talking to the record company and they say, "Any guests you want on the record?" And I said, "What about Keith Richards?" I was just joking, but somebody went ahead and called him. And then he said, "Yeah." And I said, "Now we're really in trouble."

I was really nervous. He came with about 600 guitars in a semi-truck. And a butler. We were in these huge studios in New York, like The Poseidon Adventure. Huge, high ceilings in these rooms like football fields. They'd fill these things up with orchestras and we were in there with five guys. It felt a little weird. He killed me. I was really knocked out that he played on all those things.

Pitchfork: The song "Satisfied" references the Stones and Keith. Was it written with the idea that he would play on it?

TW: It's just a shout out. I was just caught up in the moment. And then making it kind of an answer to ["Satisfaction"]: "Can't get no satisfaction... my ass, you can't get no satisfaction!" So that was just being refuckulous. It's an evangelical litany of life affirmations. It's devotional music, really. It was a goof. Les Claypool played bass on it, my son played drums, Keith. It caught on.

Photo by James Minchin III

Pitchfork: I've always enjoyed when songwriters incorporate elements from other songs, like the bit at the end of Bad as Me's "New Year's Eve" where "Auld Lang Syne" comes in.

TW: The song needed a chorus and they didn't have one. So Kathleen and I said, "Come on, we're talking about New Year's, let's just do it!" And if you've ever been at one of those gatherings where things went badly, where we all sing even though the fireworks scared the dog and he's been gone for two hours, and someone lit the sofa on fire, and Marge got food poisoning, and Bill O'Neal called the cops.

"New Year's Eve" was a long, long song that had to be cut down to what they call a pony. That's an alcoholic term for a small bottle. "Come on, give me a pony, man!" I think that's what they call those little bottles they give you on the airplane. Anyways, it was cut back to a more manageable size, but it still got the point across.

I always think of that line in Procul Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale": "I was feeling kind of seasick and the crowd called out for more." But what if it had been something else? "The crowd was disinterested," or "I was sick to my stomach and the crowd got up and left." Maybe that's what happened. That's why they get the big bucks. They know how to sell it. The truth is overrated. Avoid it all costs.