Tom Waits is back, and he comes bearing gifts. Prior to the release of Glitter and Doom, his latest live album, a selection of tracks are available as a free download from his website, and they’ve got me all in a fluster.

No longer the sweet n’ innocent boy we heard singing Ice Cream Man in his tender, jazzy tones of 1973, this is the 60-year-old Waits, the wise old demon from your childhood nightmares.

Remember the really weird one when Lucifer had his way with you because heaven was all full up? That was Tom Waits, and with Glitter and Doom he’s plugging your headphones directly into the devil’s … boots.

The smoke-fuelled croak is more gravel-ridden and larynx-haemorrhaging than ever, and with the assistance of his gypsy-deathcar-blues band, this offering is a no-holds-barred equivalent of Waits grabbing you by the collar with his bare, bloodied hands, and dragging you down with him to the fiery depths of hell.

Ever the expert storyteller, Waits teases the emotions. One minute he’s got me stomping and headbanging along to the thundering riff of Going Out West, the next I’m a hapless, weeping baby in his caring, wrinkled hands as he tells me I’ll be “Lost and never found” in Fannin Street.

It’s this tightrope between beauty and rage, art and evil, which Waits walks so masterfully, and hearing the band react to the roar of the audience on this record, the cheering, the laughter, even the idiotic lady who shouts “I love you Tom” in the middle of Such a Scream, are what give this selection its charm.

Glitter and Doom has got me fired-up. Raw, expressive, badass blues is alive and well - and best of all? There are nine tracks still to come and a bonus CD of Tom’s between-song monologues. A little self-congratulatory? Probably. But it’s Tom Waits. He’s allowed