Bone Machine
Album by Tom Waits
Released 8 September 1992
Experimental Rock / Blues
Produced by Waits & Kathleen Brennan
Rating – 8.5/10
‘Bone Machine’ is one of Tom Waits’ greatest howling, maniacal, experimental frenzies!
Tom Waits creates his own near death experience on ‘Bone Machine’. Fiddling with a number of musical styles beforehand, from dark cabaret to Louis Armstrong-influenced jazz, the sound of ‘Bone Machine’ is like no other; dark and distressing, pasted together using a stone cold blues rock backdrop, and heaps of experimentation in between.
Argue against Tom Waits being rock music’s greatest chameleon and you’ll not only be wrong, you’ll be met with a barrage of off-kilter, surrealistic lyrics that’ll weigh your brain down until it seeps and collapses into the rest of your body. I’ll gladly listen to you if you argue there is richer songwriting on other Tom Waits projects, particularly ‘Rain Dogs’, but if ‘Bone Machine’ isn’t one of his greatest stylistic enterprises, it’s a mad mad mad mad world.
Well, it’s a mad world anyway, and Tom Waits is its maddest inhabitant who loves acknowledging madness, his own brand or otherwise. There is no question that said madness, comprised of death and other gruelling images, lives in both of the lyrics and the sound of ‘Bone Machine’.
I love Tom’s high-pitched, boozy, bluesy vocals on ‘Dirt in the Ground’, utilising standout lines like “the quill from a buzzard, the blood writes the word, I want to know am I the sky or a bird” to paint a remarkably bold picture of how in the end, it doesn’t matter who we were, because we’ll end up the same thing, dirt in the ground. ‘Who Are You’ feels slightly more arbitrary, but the uber-personal balladry makes it one of the most endearing songs on the album, exploring the concept of judging someone else’s flaws to the point where you yourself become one big flaw, made of jealousy, ability to hurt and general frustration – “how do your pistol and your bible and your sleeping pills go? Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?”.
Waits’ cryptic work from previous albums rears its head a few times, particularly on ‘A Little Rain’, where Waits refuses to make a specific point and chooses to paint an amusing picture – “the Ice Man’s mule is parked outside the bar / where a man with missing fingers plays a strange guitar / and the German dwarf dances with the butcher’s son / and tonight a little rain never hurt no one”. But later on in the tracklist, Tom goes back to screaming and praying about death, see ‘Murder in the Red Barn’, a little long but affectively punishing, and ‘Black Wings’.
I’m a fan of the lyrics on ‘Goin’ Out West’ (“I LOOK GOOOD WITHOUT A SHIRT”), but let’s face it, that song has so many more impressive things going for it. The moment in the intro where the hard rock stops, and the industrial buzz powers itself into the track, is one of the very best on the album, bringing Tom Waits’ stylistic ambition to fulfilment. Instrumentally, Waits takes whatever he can get his hands on, from tuned percussion instruments (see opener ‘The Earth Died Screaming’), to old school blues guitars, to the weird shakers and the stray brass blows of ‘Such a Scream’.
And the blues influence of ‘Bone Machine’ is one of its key elements, whether uncooked to the point where Tom has a coughing fit on ‘Jesus Gonna Be Here’, or completely madcap like on ‘In the Colosseum’, or more-so on ‘All Stripped Down’, which sees Waits do his best Captain Beefheart impression.
Some more of my favourites occur towards the end of the album. ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Up’ is one of my all-time favourite Tom Waits songs, a psychotic ode to childhood and how torturous life how can once you reach a certain age – I love how there is a genuine childlike charm to the song once you strip back the heavy distortion and horror villain vocals. And I also love closer ‘That Feel’, another ballad which sees Tom joined by Keith Richards, featuring more standout lyrics like “you can throw it off a bridge, you can lose it in a fire / you can leave it at the altar, but it will make you out a liar” as Tom strikes hard with some of his most soulful vocals.
I have to admit, I don’t think ‘Bone Machine’ flows too well – Tom Waits seemed to really enjoy packing his albums out with as many pieces as possible, and it works on ‘Rain Dogs’ because almost every song is exciting or impassioned in some way, whereas I feel there are more moments of slowdown on ‘Bone Machine’, mainly in the form of its occasional anti-songwriting stance, going for warped musical ideas rather than fleshed-out compositions, but it’s not a major hindrance, it’s just noticeable.
Obviously there are other compositional elements that absolutely land on ‘Bone Machine’ – the lyrics are crafty and detailed, occasionally harrowing and mutilating, and there are a number of tunes that feel memorable for all the right reasons, see ‘Who Are You’, ‘Goin’ Out West’ and ‘That Feel’. And the sound style is impressive enough to make the album itself impressive, and it would still be impressive no matter what era it was released in – seriously, if ‘Bone Machine’ came out in 2019, it was still feel fresh and innovative, it would still be one of the best.
Favourite songs – ‘Dirt in the Ground’ – ‘All Stripped Down’ – ‘Who Are You’ – ‘Goin’ Out West’ – ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Up’ – ‘That Feel’.
Best aspect – The demented experimental rock overtones, mixed with blues and post-industrial and occasionally country.
Biggest flaw – While the album features a lot of attention-to-detail production-wise, not so much in its songwriting.
Rating – 8.5 out of 10
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