After a long period of radio silence, Tom Waits reappeared in July 2026 with ‘Boots On The Ground’, a track which, despite being a collaboration with Massive Attack, still retained some of the musical and tonal hallmarks of a later period Waits recording.

A companion piece, ‘The Fly’ delves even more deeply into an unmistakebly Waits-ian world, with Tom sharing a spoken word performance akin to his earlier classic ‘What’s He Building In There’.

Featuring just a gravel toned voice and occasional buzzing sound effects, the minimalist recording forces the listener to pay complete attention throughout, as Tom muses on a housefly’s activities, as the insect’s behavior shifts from fairly non-malignant, to becoming an omnipresent nuisance. As you might expect, the beat poem tapping into some fairly distinctive and off-kilter rhymes, delivered in a way that most fans will love. Due to the lack of music, this will likely be aimed at fans only, but the pure Tom-ness of everything makes ‘The Fly’ hold up for a full four and a half minutes.

[Content warning: Includes explicit language. Also includes use of the word spastic, which although not used as an offensive slur and used in the dictionary definition sense to convey an uneven activity, still carries a certain amount of offensive weight through association. The word has become so misused as a disability slur over the years, it’s now upsetting and ugly even when used correctly.]