Replacing the beret for a skull did wonders for Tom Waits’ cred. Movie ballads, sea shanties, Keith Richards collaborations, Delta blues, eating worms for Francis Ford Coppola — he’s beat you. His voluminous catalog defeats me; I relied on the CD-R I burned in the early 2000s of the beer ‘n’ Beats stuff and have fitfully kept up with his career since he and wife/chief collaborator Kathleen Brennan released album after album of songs about brawlers, boozers, and bastards this millennium. I prize Bone Machinemost, bought in January 1993 and to my ears the peak of his clink-clank ethos whose shrewdness allowed him to issue more than a few maudlin things that attracted him to Rod Stewart (I adore his “Downtown Train” by the way). He let Marc Ribot pull Beefheart-inflected melodic noise from his guitar, allowing him the space to treat percussion like a second lead. Give him this: he found a way to fuse Flannery O’Connor, Howlin’ Wolf, and Streisand.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.
