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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Utter perfection. , September 25, 2004
Those vocals. Those lyrics. That mood. This was My first foray into Tom's world: a gift when I was 14. I haven't looked back. From the alpha (the thumping primitive drums of "Earth Died Screaming") to the omega (the howling chorus of guys and guitars finishing off "That Feel"), this CD is like nothing else on the planet. This is a macabre, twisted world: a vision entirely of Mr. and Mrs. Waits devising (Kathleen Brennan is his wife and they write together- what a team!)
Lyrically, this is light years beyond so much music out there. Namely all of it. Waits never stoops to cliche, never resorts to the old, crusty, stale rhymes and metaphors that haunt the minds of most song-smiths. His lyrics are restlessly inventive and vivid. When he tells a story he lures you in, shows you the scene and leaves you there to figure out what happened and find your own way home again.
On the whole, this is a dark album, and it fits easily into his output from the 80's-90's... Songs such as "In the Colosseum," and "Murder in the Red barn," are eerie and unsettling. Still, Tom doesn't just write disturbing music. "Little rain," "Whistle Down the Wind," and "Who Are You," are more upbeat pieces, meaning the lovelorn lyrics and strange musings are masked by a major-key chord progression. The musical styles veer all over the board- never quite playing its straight, some of the songs are country sounding, some are folk, a couple are blues... But not quite. They inhabit a strange place between genres.
Some highlights:
The rusty, falsetto croon of "Dirt in the ground" set to the kind of funeral march horns and beat you'd expect to see in New Orleans, if New Orleans were populated by half-dead prophets and zombie musicians!
The sweet, bluesy satire of "Jesus Gonna Be Here," that sounds like Tom waits is actually a venerable bluesman from the Mississippi Delta. I played this at work once and everyone in the kitchen insisted that the singer must be a black guy. Just Tom, a bass-line and two-notes of twangy guitar. The cough at the end of the song- that cough has more soul than most band's entire discographies!!!!!
The Ennio Morricone-esque brilliance of "Black Wings": Tom is rolling the wheel of an old film projector and he rasps and murmurs and tells the story of a strange character who has no name... This song is brilliant!!! The guitar and the swishing drums... nothing I have ever heard sounds like this.
Buy this CD- it's a great trampoline into Waits' more out there stuff. And it's easily one of his more balanced CDs- almost no sleeper tracks!
Fun Fact: Earth Died Screaming is used for a scene in the Gilliam film "12 Monkeys," when Bruce Willis has taken Madeleine Stowe hostage and she's driving him into a large city (Philadelphia, I think). Also, the steady cam scene in "Fight Club," where Tyler Durden and his crew walk through the junky bar and into the basement while Ed Norton voice-over's the sequence (right before he gives them The Rules...) is set to Goin' Out West- that dark, mutant surf-rock bass riff...
C'mon, take a chance on this!
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This should be a staple in every CD collection, February 17, 2001
I became re-acquainted with Tom Waits' material through "Bone Machine" and, though the Grammy Awards now honor only musical mediocrity (with lamentably few worthy exceptions), they DID have enough sense back in '93 to recognize this CD's sublime artistry and give it an award (Best Alternative Recording, if memory serves ...). And what an album it is. It comes packed with Waits' usual (or should I say UNusual) suspects, characters pulled from some horrific, gothically imaginative nightmare: Slam the Crank from Wheezer (where the HELL did he come up with that name?), Reba the Loon, Cal and Chenoweth, Hannibal (or maybe just Rex), a lady drinking alone in her room, murderers lurking in red barns and a mysterious suicidal individual, turning away from death only because he knows "the ocean doesn't want me today". We've all been in those black places, only Waits writes about them with such unflinching honesty and clarity that you cannot avoid the pain, even while you're chewing on his gravelly voice, filtered through strange microphones and musical equipment. There are no lush violins, no overblown scores here: it's "All Stripped Down" and that's just how we want you, Tom. "Bone Machine" is all stripped down and glorious. It's percussive and raw; it borders on dangerous, lethal. Waits is one of a mere handful of truly gifted lyricists left in America today. Unlike so many "pop" artists, who lose their edge when they get married/get happy/have a baby, Waits manages to have a normal life with his wife, Kathleen Brennan (who also produced "Bone Machine") while still never losing sight of the darkness just behind that red barn ... Right near that axe spattered with bloodstains ...
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a haunting classic, November 29, 1999
Tom Waits dug deep to find this one - and he dug all over the place. Visceral, vivid and jarring, 'Bone Machine' is a boisterous celebration of all things nocturnal. Unfolding like a bad dream, the album careens from track to track as Waits assumes roles varied roles: narrator, spectator, prophet, grim reaper. In "black wings," a sinister cowboy ballad, Waits is a wizened storyteller; in "in the colloseum," an ugly ode to carnage, he's an unabashed participant.There are moments of warmth in 'Bone Machine;' most notable is "who are you," a deeply romantic song of painful love - "are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?" Waits asks, mixing wit and hurt. On other tracks, Waits' juxtapositions are less expected and even more unsettling. The album's opening track, "earth died screaming," combines bare, almost tribal preccusion with a harsh interpretation of R&B; the result is dark, grating and very effective. 'Bone Machine' is bewitching. Listen to it at night.
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by Tom Waits 
