Tom Waits’ first studio album in seven years explores familiar themes of love and religion gone wrong under some new and largely satisfying arrangements. Armed with the most awesomely peculiar voice in American music, Waits understands the necessity of reinvention to keep the wheels turning after decades and decades of recording. The approach pays dividends on Bad As Me, with the exception of the clunky bass line and awkward blues stabs of “Raised Right Men.” On tracks such as “Pay Me” and “Talking At The Same Time,” Waits’ perpetually-stellar songwriting soars. He personifies sorrow with his slow-burning ballads and kicks the living shit out of it with his bruised baritone. Bare bone riffs peppered with sporadic, meandering keys puts Waits right at home on the instant classic come-on of “Kiss Me.”