and its funny lyrics, about a bewildered middle-aged man who can barely operate a microwave after his woman leaves him, are alive with the self-deprecating mordancy Costello borrowed from Lennon.

A similar grim mordancy holds for most of Waits’ protagonists – the drifter brought low on “Fannin Street”; the farmer who loses his farm in a flood, only to see his beloved leave town.

Her monotone and thousand-yard stare could be the product of ennui. Then again, the lyric's extreme mordancy could just as easily be the kind of songwriting joke she learned from Bonnie "Prince" Billy ...