LP Review: Tom Waits – Bone Machine

Tom Waits is a mechanic. His work comprises of flawless production values mapped together by a solid emotional presence and a lyrical understanding of the world. However, where many discuss Swordfishtrombones (1983) as a turning point in the character of the musician, it is hard to escape that he has always upheld a moralistic approach when it came to the roots of every note in every track on every album. With direct detail, 1975’s Nighthawks at the Diner is a pitch-perfect portrait of the Jazz bar caricature that had been painted for him with previous albums Closing Time (1973) and Heart of the Saturday Night (1974). With 1992’s Bone Machine, Waits’ has successfully developed his sound that challenges the pre-conceptions that lie within the contemporary view of blues and faith-based folk music.

As every written word about the album would tell you, Bone Machine was conceived in a concrete basement. This location makes way for the added blood soaked imagery of a slaughterhouse or a medieval dungeon. The recording studio, which is usually pictured as a medically sterile environment, has become a torture chamber where it is impossible to ignore the brain matter on the walls. In fact, it is possible to compare the nightmarish underbelly of Bone Machine with Leonard Cohen’s The Future and Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads. Where all three place alienated, used up and dried out characters in a desolate and merciless world, Bone Machine evokes a hauntingly timeless feel that is usually associated with Lightnin’ Hopkins.

By hand-picking his supporting players, Waits’ manages to encase his work in a schizophrenic personality. On the one hand, Les Claypool’s neo- Neanderthal bass playing satisfies the MTV generation with his quirkiness and modern rock sensibilities  whereas Keith Richards’ inclusion in the final track, “That Feel”, creates a spiritually traditional vibe that could only be forged by the man who brought the blues to the band who took it to England.

By far the most visceral album Waits has yet to record, Bone Machine begins with a call to impending doom. The use of the glockenspiel clanging is designed to sound skeletal, thus bringing meaning to the title of the album. It serves as an opener created to invite the listener into something extraordinary. Hyperbolic language crawls from Waits’ mouth sounding like a soothsayer’s prediction. We believe that “crows are as big as airplanes” in this place he speaks of and by the time his gospel gothic tongue gurgles the words “dreaming of you”, we realise this is the place Waits now lives. 

The album, in its entirety, moves equally through genres and moods. “Dirt in the Ground” acts as a sombre ballad with shades of dark optimism whereas “Such a Scream” breaks from this into a dance track for vampires and werewolves. The punk rumba of this song quickly diminishes into the archaic “All Stripped Down”, a distant relative of the Rolling Stones’ “I Just Want to See His Face” if there ever was one. Its metaphoric description of the song itself echoes and blends into the track-listing, leaving almost no trace by the time “Who Are You” gives us a taste of Waits’ classic song writing skills.

Oddly, the maestro takes this turn a few times throughout the piece, as most of the album focuses on the Mr. Hyde side of its personality. The presence of “Jesus Gonna Be Here”, “Goin’ Out West” and “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”, arguably the album’s three signature tracks, gives the album chart quality, but it is the adventurous turns taken by Waits to include heart-rendering ballads (“That Feel”, “Whistle Down The Wind”) along with his dark star, (“Black Wings”, “In The Coliseum”) that makes Bone Machine an accomplishment.

Written for Blues Matters 25.07.2008