Tom Waits 14: Bone Machine

The so-called Island trilogy of the mid-‘80s arguably brought Tom Waits the widest notoriety of his career to date. Then he took another break from music, acted in a few films, won a couple of lawsuits and presumably raised his children. The gap was finally broken by the soundtrack to a Jim Jarmusch film. Night On Earth juxtaposed taxi rides in five different cities around the world, with suitable accompaniment from Tom’s chosen carnies and roustabouts evoking a smoky late-night feel. Most of the “moods” and “themes” are variations of each other, and therefore fairly repetitive. As with many soundtracks, the tracks fade into the background pretty quickly. (We do like the bellowed “two, three, four” in the middle of “Los Angeles Theme”.) Of more interest were the handful of vocals. “Good Old World” is a prettier version of “Back In The Good Old World”, which is only slightly different from “On The Other Side Of The World”.

Thankfully, a “real” album emerged later in the same year. Bone Machine presented the latest evolution of his Beefheart-influenced approach, heavy on percussion that sounded like, well, bones being struck together, right off the bat in “Earth Died Screaming”. “Dirt In The Ground” continues the uplifting trend, on a piece for falsetto, piano and sax. “Such A Scream” provides the debut of the elusive Eyeball Kid, before sliding into “All Stripped Down”. “Who Are You” finally delivers a song, but just as you’re lulled into place, “The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me” presents the monologue of a woman considering drowning herself. Still, that makes a cool segue into “Jesus Gonna Be Here”, another fake gospel song sung in a high falsetto.

The pretty piano returns on “A Little Rain”, with a touch of pedal steel coloring the corners, then gives way to “In The Colosseum”, a noisy dirge not far removed from his notorious “seven dwarves on strike” version of “Heigh-Ho”. “Goin’ Out West” is also noisy, but offers something of a groove with some excellent lyrics (“Tony Franciosa used to date my ma”; “I look good without a shirt”) and spaghetti-Western guitar. “Murder In The Red Barn” uses a squeaky chair for the rhythm, telling an even starker story than coliseum two tracks earlier. There’s another tale hidden within “Black Wings”, with an overall sound that conjures the spooky image implied in the title. “Whistle Down The Wind” is a cousin to “A Little Rain”, with a lonesome pair of fiddles soloing over the bridge. The other “rock” song on the album, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”, has a wonderfully distorted guitar to match the voice of a rather perceptive kid, and you might not notice that there’s no drums until the third play through. A 55-second distillation of the “Such A Scream”/“All Stripped Down” approach sets “That Feel” off on its own. Everyone’s favorite song on the album, it features Keith Richards wailing along in a near duet.

Bone Machine isn’t as consistent as its predecessors, choosing instead to present a variety of styles with no other overlying concept. As it turns out, he was up to something, but that’s a story for later. For now, it was just nice to have something new from the guy.

Tom Waits Night On Earth (1992)—2
Tom Waits Bone Machine (1992)—3