The Black Rider (album)

The Black Rider
Studio album by
Tom Waits
ReleasedSeptember 1993 (1993-09)
Recorded1989, 1993
Genre
Length56:08
LabelIsland
ProducerTom Waits
Tom Waits chronology
Bone Machine
(1992) 		The Black Rider
(1993) 		Mule Variations
(1999)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
Chicago Tribune[2]
Entertainment WeeklyB[3]
Los Angeles Times[4]
Mojo[5]
NME8/10[6]
Q[7]
Rolling Stone[8]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[9]
Select4/5[10]

The Black Rider is the twelfth studio album by Tom Waits, released in 1993 on Island Records, featuring studio versions of songs Waits wrote for the play The Black Rider, directed by Robert Wilson and co-written by William S. Burroughs. The play is based on the German folktale Der Freischütz by Johann August Apel, which had previously been made into an opera by Carl Maria von Weber. It is about a clerk who makes a Faustian bargain for magic bullets, with tragic results. The play premiered on March 31, 1990, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany. Its world English-language premiere occurred in 1998 at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival. Per the Los Angeles Times, "It’s most easily described as a Faustian musical-tragicomedy."[11]

Waits would later collaborate with Wilson on Alice (1992) and Woyzeck (2000); the songs for those were released on the albums Alice and Blood Money, respectively.

  1. ^ Ruhlmann, William. "The Black Rider – Tom Waits". AllMusic. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  2. ^ Caro, Mark (March 3, 1994). "Tom Waits: The Black Rider (Island)". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  3. ^ "Tom Waits: The Black Rider". Entertainment Weekly: 64. November 12, 1993.
  4. ^ Willman, Chris (November 14, 1993). "Tom Waits: 'The Black Rider' (Island)". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  5. ^ "Tom Waits: The Black Rider". Mojo (200): 77. July 2010.
  6. ^ "Tom Waits: The Black Rider". NME: 29. November 13, 1993.
  7. ^ "Tom Waits: The Black Rider". Q (87): 116. December 1993.
  8. ^ Ali, Lorraine (July 31, 1997). "The Black Rider". Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  9. ^ Coleman, Mark; Scoppa, Bud (2004). "Tom Waits". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. pp. 854–55. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  10. ^ Perry, Andrew (December 1993). "Tom Waits: The Black Rider". Select (42): 88.
  11. ^ Willman, Chris (November 14, 1993). "Tom Waits "The Black Rider"". Los Angeles Times.