Tom Waits: Bone Machine (180g, remastered) [ISLAND]

Why you'll love it

This edition was newly remastered under Waits and Kathleen Brennan from the original production master tape, on 180g vinyl with restored packaging. Bone Machine won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Remastered from the original production master tape
• Restored original packaging
• Lyric and credits inner sleeve
• Pressed in Germany
• Stereo mix

About the album

Tom Waits found the room for Bone Machine in the cellar at Prairie Sun Recording in Cotati, California, and described it as "just a cement floor and a hot water heater." He liked the echo. It was his first studio album in five years, and the first on which he played drums and percussion extensively, often on a homemade metal contraption he called the conundrum, played with a hammer.

The result is clattering and primal, songs about mortality and decay wrapped in junkyard rhythm, with a surprisingly tender heart underneath. Waits co-wrote and produced it with Kathleen Brennan, and the guests are wonderfully varied: David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Les Claypool of Primus, the drummer Brain and Keith Richards, who co-wrote and sings on "That Feel." "Goin' Out West" swaggers, "Earth Died Screaming" opens in a thunder of percussion, "Jesus Gonna Be Here" is a front-porch hymn, and "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" was later covered by the Ramones.

AllMusic called it Waits' "most affecting and powerful recording," and NME said "easily one of Tom's best." Somewhere in Cotati there's a hot water heater with a Grammy-winning credit, and we like to think it knows.

Also at Kops: more Tom Waits on vinyl · browse Singer-Songwriter

Tracklist

Listen

On Island, a reissue of the 1992 album.