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97 of 101 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spectcular Music Journey Visiting Every Genre, November 22, 2006
"What's Orphans? I don't know. Orphans is a dead end kid driving a coffin with big tires across the Ohio River wearing welding goggles and a wife beater with a lit firecracker in his ear." Tom Waits
A 54 song masterpiece is what I call this new Tom Waits 3 CD rumble. A phalanx of songs from every period of life and every genre of American music. He has separated these 3 CD's into a concise set of marvelously named originals called 'Orphans"- 'Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards'. His wife Kathleen collaborated with Tom, and they have done his fine whiskey voice justice.
Brawler, disc one, was my least favorite, but I have listened 4 times and this set has grown close to my heart. The 16 songs on this disc are a mix of juke box, Muddy Waters blues and honky tonk, clangy tunes. 'Sea of Love' is done with a clever twist.
'Bawlers', disc two, is my favorite full of ballads of gone wrong. 20 songs a mixture of saloon songs , Celtic songs and torch songs. 'Tell It To Me' is a country song full of yearning and the rest of the group is as lovely and sad as you would want. They all give a message of the end of the road and hope is strong.
'Bastards' is an amalgamation of songs that don't fit elsewhere. 20 songs, some experimental, from Army Ants to King Kong and a poem by Bukowski. Tom Waits has some strange stories to tell on disc 3- 'night, night'. This is the perfect ending to a three series set that frames the art written and sung by Tom Waits.
Tom Waits was named as one of VH-1's Most Influential Artists of All Time, and it is no surprise that Waits' body of work has long been covered by other musicians. "There is also a long list of artists who have cited Waits as an inspiration, including Bob Dylan who named Tom as one of his "secret heroes". Boston Phoenix
As Tom Wait said in an interview "The center of this record is my voice. I try my best to chug, stomp, weep, whisper, moan, wheeze, scat, blurt, rage, whine, and seduce. With my voice, I can sound like a girl, the boogieman, a Theremin, a cherry bomb, a clown, a doctor, a murderer...I can be tribal. Ironic. Or disturbed. My voice is really my instrument". And Tom Waits has given us his best instrument wrapped up in gold. A truly special series of songs for all of us Tom Waits fans. Bravo.
Highly Recommended. prisrob 11/22/06
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53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unearthed, December 17, 2006
Well, Waits has finally emptied out the orphange. Then burnt it to the ground. Torched it. Holding court like a manic Fagin, Waits sets loose enough Oliver Twists & Artful Dodgers to live up to it's title.
Thoughtfully sequenced over 3 discs, Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards says it all. Starting off with the demented Rockabilly of "Lie To Me", Brawlers lies somewhere between 1999's Mule Variations & 2004's "Real Gone". Highlights include the take-no-prisoners, "Fish In The Jailhouse" & a cover of Leadbelly's "Ain't Goin' Down To The Well" that defies easy categorization. Also notable is the gutter Gospel of "Lord I've Been Changed" & the rousing hobo ballad, "Bottom Of The World". While the heart of "Road To Peace" is certainly in the right place, this overtly political treatise quickly wears out its welcome after 1 listen. But despite the monotony of "Peace", things like "Rains On Me" & his barnstorming turn with The Ramones' "Jackie & Judy" are guaranteed to have you coming back for more.
If the unholy onslaught of "Real Gone" alienated any fans of Waits' softer side, Bawlers more than makes up for any ruffled feathers. "You Can Never Hold Back Spring" beautifully harks back to Waits' earlier work while rousing ballads like "Never Let Go Of Your Hand" rank as some of his best. No one spikes a dirge with bittersweet heartbreak like Waits & the likes of "Little Drop OF Poison" & "It's Over" are classics, pure & simple. For those who've heard Johnny Cash's version of "Down There By The Train", fans can finally hear the song in it's entirety. Perhaps Cash felt silly singing "Humptry Jackson" or "Gyp The Blood" but it comes at the expense of, "and Charlie Whitman is holding on to Dillinger's wings". Along with the aformentioned, the world weary "Goodnight Irene" & "If I Have To Go" are sure to make Bawlers the disc that gets the most play in the collection.
By & large Bastards consists of Waits' signature spoken word pieces & some truely ecclectic covers. Brecht/Weill's "What Keeps Mankind Alive" seems tailor made & his take on "Heigh Ho" is the stuff of legend. Here Snow White's cute little friends come off more like pissed off trolls ominously digging their way into hell. Jack Kerouac has always been an acknowledged influence & with "Home I'll Never Be " & "On The Road" Waits presents 2 dramatically different renditions of the same song. Both are indispensible. As is his turn on Skip Spence's apocalyptic, "Books Of Moses". Only Daniel Johnson's "King Kong" is the least welcome. Along with "Road To Peace" it ranks as the most monotonous number on the collection. And if the instrumental "Redrum" sounds like a bunch of kids messing around in Waits' garage---well, that's exactly what it is. As for the spoken word pieces, "First Kiss" is sure to keep you coming back for more. Among the few original songs on this disc, "Altar Boy" gloriously harks back to the drunken heydays of "Piano Has Been Drinking". Elsewhere, "Dog Door" & Spidey's Wild Ride" could've has easily slipped off of "Real Gone". If that weren't enough, Waits has a few hidden surprises in store, sure to appease fans of Nighthawks At The Diner.
All in all, this is the Waits equivalent of Johnny Cash's Unearthed. The motherlode. Move over Teddy Roosevelt, time to chisle Tom's craggy mug up next to the Man In Black on Mt. Rushmore.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's Tom Waits, and therefore excellent, April 6, 2007
Nobody does grizzled and world-weary quite like Tom Waits, and coming off 2004's incredible Real Gone, the mammoth three-disc collection Orphans is yet more proof of his bizarre genius. Even putting aside the abundance of great music it contains, it is, if nothing else, a fitting tribute to Waits's persistently uncommercial, marketing-be-damned approach to his music. Comprised of a whopping 54 songs (both Waits originals and covers) and clocking in at about three hours, Orphans is vintage Waits from beginning to end-unvarnished, unconventional, and uncompromising. Given the enormous amount of variety to be found here, everyone's going to have their personal favorites, but whichever tracks one prefers there's no denying that Orphans makes the perfect testament to Waits's endless creativity, stinging wit and gritty, PhD-in-life sensibility.
Waits has long been a a man of many personas-demented carnival barker, old testament prophet, Jesus freak, depression-era bluesman-and even more than his more traditional albums Orphans shows off his chameleonic nature to the fullest extent. With its ample available space, Orphans allows Waits to induldge in genre exercises ranging from rockabilly (Lie To Me); to baroque pop (Little Drop of Poison); to swamp blues (Buzz Fledderjohn); to gospel (Lord I've been changed) without ever sounding like just an imitator of his varied influences. That said, Waits is still at his best when he dwells in a musical territory all his own, be it noisy, free-form experimentation or more reflective, sparsely instrumented balladry.
Each disc brings with its own unique feel, with the first one feeling the most like a proper Waits album in the vein of such all-encompassing classics as Rain Dogs and Bone Machine. Waits gets his classic-rock fix taken are of early with the scorching Low Down, whose big, brash guitar riffs wouldn't sound out of place in the '60's. The clamorous percussion and dizzying time signatures of Fish in the Jailhouse should please fans of Waits's more eccentric side, or just those like this writer who crave something abrasive and weird. Providing a sharp contrast to these tunes, but still very much in line with Waits's overall approach, are the downcast resignation of the bluesy, guitar-driven Road to Piece (a seven-minute examination of the conflict in Israel) and the closing lament of Rains on Me.
The ballad-heavy second disc, while occasionally a tad forgettable, is still home to some of the most brilliant material of Waits's career. The triumphant Take Care of All of My Children is driven by a stirring, martial drum beat, while the following Down There by the Train manages to expertly combine sadness, regret, and hope through Waits's singularly poetic lyrical imagery ("There's no eye for an eye/There's no tooth for a tooth/I saw Judas Iscariot carryin' John Wilkes Booth"-brilliant). In somewhat of a curveball for Waits, Never Let Go is inspiring and poignant in its straightforward message of devotion. There's also a great, booze-sodden lament in Goodnight Irene, which finds Waits's nicotine-stained voice at its most raw and unhinged.
The third disc is a nod to every side of the schizophrenic last two decades of Waits's career, with unstructured noise explorations (the mutant jazz-blues-rock workout Heigh Ho is hard-edged and ominous even for Waits) to a slew of spoken-word pieces to some more tender ballads. Waits starts off the disc by breaking out his classic rasp on the delightfully malevolent What Keeps Mankind Alive, and backs himself up with some inspired vocal beat-boxing on the Spidey's Wild Ride and King Kong. The latter track is especially interesting, with Waits's pained wail augmented by some ear-piercing guitar squeals and a subterranean bass line as he declaims the tragic story of, well, King Kong, with all the gravity of a character delivering the closing monologue of a Shakespearean tragedy.
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