Bone Machine.
In 1992, it had been about five years since Tom Waits had released a studio album (Franks Wild Years), when he stepped into the Prairie Sun Recording studios in C.A. and created this monster album of songs every bit as morbid and frightful as the cover art indicates. He sang it in a voice that could be called ugly and just as easily (well, to some of us) be called beautiful. He even released two music videos, primitive accompaniments to an album made with as few instruments as possible (often just percussion, guitar and some upright bass); music stripped back almost to the bones. Yes, he recorded and produced it all in a studio, but did so in the cellar - complete with cement floor and hot water heater. As Tom said "it's got some good echo."
The punchline: this most difficult music, the darkest chapter in his career and not something to sit easily on a person's mind, won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music album. Isn't that nice?
People new to the music of Tom Waits, however, may well be inclined to shut it off before they reach track five, since Tom makes you work for the music. The most punishing tracks are lumped together right at the start (except for In the Colosseum), and only after that can a certain amount of "entertainment" be had.
Earth Died Screaming is where it begins, mostly with percussion that sounds like rattling bones - it would be plain silly, except the imagery invoked is...well... "and the great day of wrath has come/and here's mud in your big red eye/the poker's in the fire/the locusts take the sky." Did I mention his way with words? The transfer from his indifferent account of apocalypse to the impassioned chorus is even more unsettling.
Dirt in the Ground is classic Waits in the ballad style, the piano and clarinet and upright bass making it beautiful to hear. It's also a treatise on how death undoes all of life's meaning and Tom sounds absolutely wounded to sing it. "What does it matter, a dream of love/or a dream of lies/we're all gonna be in the same place when we die." It doesn't get any better.
Such a Scream is not as bad as it may sound - it's music as cacophony, percussion and saxophone vying for your attention while the lyric goes on almost tunelessly about a bizarre, possibly invented woman.
And then there's noise. Very interesting, but it might be a bit much for the unwary. Persevere! All Stripped Down is the first entertaining song - it's infectious, catchy, Tom sings it in a ridiculous high pitch and it's even got elements of a rather surreal kind of love song.
Now things are alright. That doesn't mean it's any happier. Who Are You is the bleeding heart ballad of the set (Tom has a stable of characters in his world, guises donned for whatever the next story is). Who Are You sneaks in a perfect reference to bones, deliberately tying it into the concept, despite the song being addressed to a duplicitous woman. Sung with such sincerity, filled with telling details and antagonism, it's an immediate highlight.
The Ocean Doesn't Want Me is a monologue, briefly recited as a man contemplates drowning, hungers for it, yet is turned back at the last by a faint unease. I defy you to listen to it and not get chills.
Jesus Gonna Be Here is standard acoustic blues, and damn! does he ever replicate the style of the old bluesmen. Unfortunately, I don't much care for the repetition of the blues so this song, of them all, really leaves me cold.
Contrast with the piano driven A Little Rain, a world weary yet comforting intermission. Loss hangs over the fragmented characters of the song, yet the narrator assert "a little trouble makes it worth the going/and a little rain never hurt no one."
In the Colosseum is mainly a tour of carnage and a lot of drums, played by someone humorously called "Brain." Tom plays chamberlain and conundrum and the song leaves a bad taste in the mouth, as any contemplation of the Roman games should...
At this point, I remember thinking I had the album pegged, I knew the themes and how it all tied together. Well, in fact I didn't know anything about it, because Goin' Out West was next. A fuzz drenched guitar rock track (still with only upright for the bass) with a lyric so overly macho that it becomes the only comedic passage. There's still some menace, but no death and the song comes as both a relief and a shock.
Murder in the Red Barn is the best song to sum up Bone Machine - it's got his all-in-a-day's-work recital tone, it's got a banjo (!), percussion (including what sounds like a rocking chair) and upright bass and that's it, and the lyric is monumental. Here's just a snatch of the enigmatic happenings: "someone's crying in the woods/someone's burying all his clothes/now Slam the Crank from Wheezer/slept outside last night and froze." There's at least seven pertinent characters and a ton of confusing events. It's great. You'll never figure it out.
Black Wings sports a fuller sound with two guitars, maracas and a music solo that allows you to draw breath. A western, starring a dark angel type of cowboy awash in Biblical imagery. An exceptional interlude, "and the fenceposts/in the moonlight look like bones."
Piano balladry makes a final flourish on Whistle Down the Wind, about a man who has remained all his life out in the prairie. You can feel the lachrymose desolation. David Hidalgo of A Hawk and a Handsaw guests with accordion and violin, adding to the lugubrious sense of lost time.
I Don't Wanna Grow Up is an astoundingly quick attack on the adult world by a very disenchanted youth, putting down the rat race, the superficial comforts, the futility "nothing out there but sad and gloom." Since everyone on record so far is either damaged or dead, it's perfectly in keeping with the concept. Simple song, just more bass and guitar, yet very catchy.
Let Me Get Up On It is a percussion experiment that doesn't even last a whole minute and has an inaudible lyric. What was the point? It's Tom Waits' world - stuff like that is part and parcel for him.
That Feel is notable for being co-written and with backing vocals from Keith Richards. It's an ode to "the one thing you can't lose," some indestructible feeling that - apparently - can survive everything on Bone Machine. So you're not left in the lurch; you're bid farewell with a teary sing-along.
That is that. That's Tom Waits at his most consistently morbid, more or less. There's far more to Waits' World than this bag of bones though. There are diners and waitresses, musical theaters helped out by Alice in Wonderland and William S. Burroughs (not, alas, at the same time), sailors, booze, true love, crime and rain. Lots of rain. Any one album is only the tip of the iceberg with this guy. If you're just starting out and like the sound of this one, by all means try it out.
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