The geopoetics of Tom Waits’s America: a study in cultural geography and sound

Abstract

This article examines the imaginative geographies produced in Tom Waits’s music, focusing on how sound, instrumentation and vocal performance generate affective spaces of belonging, displacement and estrangement. Rather than treating songs as representations of place, the paper approaches them as spatial practices that actively construct environments through sonic texture, rhythm and narrative voice. Drawing on work in cultural and sonic geography, the article situates Waits’s music within debates on soundscape, affect and the non-representational dimensions of space. Particular attention is given to how distortion, timbre and unconventional instrumentation produce what may be described as ‘surreal soundscapes’, in which listeners are invited to inhabit unstable and emotionally charged environments. Through close analysis of selected tracks from Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985) and Mule Variations (1999), the article argues that Waits constructs a distinctive form of imaginative geography that operates beyond lyrical meaning. His music creates spaces that are not only narrated but sonically enacted, allowing listeners to assume shifting positions within landscapes of marginality, memory and affect. In doing so, the paper contributes to contemporary discussions in the geographies of music by demonstrating how popular music can function as a mode of spatial thinking grounded in sound, atmosphere and embodied listening.