Tom Waits is a national treasure, but he is not the most accessible artist. Sure, his first couple albums are easy to listen to if you like lounge jazz and pub rock (not the most popular genres nowadays), but starting with Swordfish Trombone, Waits decided to screw all that musing about alcohol and hookers from Minneapolis and get creative. For Waits, that meant embracing early blues, European folk, distorted microphones, and aural poetry. Bone Machine is his most cohesive album, sort of his Exile On Main Street, a tour through his influences, scattered with some real surprises. The first track The Earth Died Screaming, is built on apocalyptic imagery and percussion that sounds like it is being played with bones. Waits sounds like a demon throughout--his voice alternatively whispers elegies and screams with barroom thunder--and never before or since has he used his talents to such great effect. There are even pop songs scattered among the sonic experimentation--the ballad Who Are You and the punk folk of I Don't Want to Grow Up--along with the rare rocker like Going Out West. Bone Machine is as if Bob Dylan, Captain Beefheart, Howlin' Wolf, and Keith Richards all got together and wrote a bunch of songs. This album cemented my admiration of Waits and made him one of my favorite artists. I got to see him play in Louisville several years ago, and the experience was amazing, for Waits was every bit as good as he is on record. Sure, he had to ask the audience to give him lyrics for Tango Till They're Sore, but hey, who wouldn't forget the verses after writing that many songs?
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