By DAVID WILLIAMS

Late in the opening song of his new album, Tom Waits shouts over a squall of blues harp and raw guitar: “All aboard! All aboard!” Our destination is Chicago, where “maybe things will be better.” But this being a Tom Waits album, Chicago surely will be the death of us all – if we make it that far. Bad luck will befall us at every bend, evil will slip a little something into our drinks, and if the train doesn’t go off the rails somewhere outside of South Doom, it’s only because our conductor has a full-on, proper train wreck in mind for us. Sounds like hell. But hell, it’s why we signed on for the trip. We’ll be like June Star and John Wesley, the kids in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” shouting gleefully after the wreck of the family auto, “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!”