Bone Machine

Kind of wacky, kind of muppet-y but I enjoyed it!

Took me half the album to come around to the type of sound I was listening too. An interesting album to sit on the floor and contemplate to as it plays on your speakers. Goin out west and black wing were the standout songs for me.

My 4th Waits album and i have given the previous ones a 2, 3 and 4...and I still have not had Rain Dogs yet. This falls below par unfortunately. outside of a handful of standout songs, the rest just did not leave an impression. I felt like it finished better than it started, with the two best songs right at the end of the album; "That Feel" and the standout song "Whistle down the Wind". 2.5 stars

This could become a 5 star with more listens

Pretty good

I like this

I'll state that I'm not a Tom Waits fan and would normally bypass his stuff, but this album is very good Still not a fan

Having never listened to him before and not knowing what to expect, at first I struggled with it and thought it was weird. Then suddenly it clicked and I was loving it. It got a second play and then went to another or his albums. A new fan was recruited.

Like a live Deep South carnival show. It has vibes that it would be An amazing show.

Rariiiiisimo disco. Pero le gusto, osea nose momentos no, momenyos medio lokis me re gustarin nose

3.5/10 Here's the thing. I appreciate everything Tom Waits does; his music is located at the intersection of the folk, rock, and experimental genres, which appeals to me on a primal level. The problem is that I cannot stand his voice and many (if not all) of the vocal techniques he uses. If this album had a different singer I could see it getting 4 or 5 stars. But Tom Waits just doesn't work for me...

I think you need to be willing to go pretty far off the beaten path of the sounds of mainstream music to be able to appreciate Tom Waits. Thankfully I find myself having some unusual tastes, so this album is just fine to my ears! I do wonder how much gravel Tom Waits has eaten in his life, though.

Wow, when it clicks it clicks! Awesome album, awesome music, awesome album cover. It's like listening to a corpse singing about the sins of humanity through its decomposing larynx. True Southern Gothic Horror Alternative. Side note: I played this album in the background of a Dungeons and Dragons rural murder mystery and everyone loved it. 10/10 truly an amazing experience, glad I found it here!

Bro I genuinely cannot with the amount of growling shit we get fed on this list. I always hear about people praising Tom Waits. But wtf is this, genuinely? Can you imagine queuing this up at a function with the homies? “Who are you” for example sounds like some shit I’d freestyle drunk with the boys. I can’t man. I thought cohen was hard to get into, but this may genuinely be one of my least favorite listens on the list. Fuck.

Even with these absolute stinkers I still get it. Too much growl lyrically it’s somber but I just feel no connection, I know what this lead to but I don’t really understand it too much vocal strain not that fun

Not music you'd play at a dinner party. Waits' gravelly voice sounds like its spinning tales of a minor demon escaped from hell.

valoro lo experimental pero un poco mucho para mi, algunos temas buenos pero poca coherencia entre tema y tema. banco la temática de locura y aislamiento

he has the worst voice

It’s like if a old dude went into trade aid and started playing with the little instruments and yodelling at the same time

This is not for everyone. But if it is for you, you're really gonna dig it. Unlike some of Waits' other stuff (which I don't like as much), the production and choice of instruments here really shines. (I originally discovered this album because Queens of the Stone Age covered "Goin' Out West" arguably one of the best songs here. But do give the whole thing a try. Then another one, because you might hate it at first.)

One of the easiest fives ever for me. This is Tom Waits at his creative best, and with lots of echos from Rain Dogs and Swordfishthrombones (ooooh thos albums!) The album is very consistent and are bound by the content and the amazing rhythms. And some harrowingly beautiful songs, Dirt in the Ground, a top candidate for my funeral I'd say (admittedly there are a few more, it's going to be a long and musical funeral, mine!) And then there's the purely atmospheric songs (The Ocean doesn't want me Today etc.). I can't praise this album enough. One of my absolute favourites.

DNF

I tried. I'm just not a Tom Waits fan.

There’s a kernel of something interesting here, but listening to him gargle gravel for a whole album sucks.

Every time I listen to a Tom Waits album I like his music a little more. This one has the track from Fight Club (You do not talk about Fight Club) where they walk into the Fight Club (You do NOT talk about Fight Club). Excellent. I aim to return to this.

Intriguing.

I like his earlier works better.

Makes captain beefheart sound like paul mccartney

Again, his voice startles me every time I get one of his albums (I think this is the last one). His voice works better with creepy songs, and while there were a few song on this album I didn't like, most of them were okay. I didn't notice when the album ended and Spotify started playing Rain Dogs (which is another of his albums I liked). I think my rating would be 3.5 so I'll round up.

Would not buy

i don’t like this guys voice

Sounds like Trout Mask Replica if captain beefheart went easier on the magic band. I liked Dirt in the Ground, Goin' Out West, and I Don't Wanna Grow Up. It grew on me a little throughout the album but not that much.

great album if you're deaf

Ik ken 'Dirt in the Ground' en ik wist een beetje wat ik moest verwachten van dit album. Een rare miens met een rare kapotte stem die toch sfeervolle haast Americana/country achtige nummers loopt te zingen danwel spoken-worden. Het slaat helemaal nergens op, maar ik vind dit toch een heel gaaf album. 4 sterren.

best album ever recorded inside a bathroom.

Ritmos primitivos que combinan bien con la voz áspera de Tom Oir este sonido alternativo lo que me hace sentir es que lo que al final llega al oyente es la cohesión de todos los elementos combinados, y acá ocurre eso, no son los sonidos más pulidos, pero no puedo decir que no haga sentido A veces suena amenazante, cuando llega al blues donde lo tengo en una posición alta, es donde se ve con mayor evidencia toda su calidad y además que el sigue su camino y se mantiene auténtico Lo veo como un proyecto influyente, ahora va a ser valioso entender el impacto que tuvo, me lo llevo de tarea Disfruten, recomiendo

Meh

From the Vault #50 (August 8, 2026) Third Tom Waits album. I assembled a pre-written review of Waits' "Rain Dogs" two albums ago. I'd never even so much as heard of Waits until I pulled "Nighthawks at the Diner" as my 530th album and here I am halfway through his included discography. The joy of working my way down the list by order of runtime, huh? Anyways, I thought Rain Dogs was pretty shit, so my prospects of liking this album are low. Regardless, I'm always favourable to the late-career picks because of how rare they are, so I shall go in with an open mind. Here goes. Yeah, Waits still fucking sucks. I'm all for weirdo offbeat music, though I just don't understand what is appealing about bleating, babbling, schlubby vocals. Buddy listened to Trout Mask Replica and decided to make it his entire personality. The music of this album isn't any better. It's mismatched with Waits' voice and is generally pretty empty, lazy and derivative. On very rare occasions the instrumentals lean into a dark, ominous sound with a prominent industrial influence. Those stretches stick out in my memory for the simple fact that they mesh with Waits' strange style, though for the most part I found the stylistic influences of this album to be shoddily implemented. Rain Dogs clued me into the fact that Waits is primarily celebrated for his songwriting panache and lyrical content, but I mean. I can be forgiven for not wanting to listen to his singing, right? All in all, this album was real fucking long and real fucking boring, though I suppose I respect it for marching to the beat of its own drum (even if it is trying very hard to be like Trout Mask Replica). Book time. Influenced by 50s beat poetry. Waits is both a self-taught guitarist and pianist. This album serves as a blending of his 70s stage persona with his experimental 80s discography. The album name is derived from "bone music", a term coined by Waits to describe music which has been broken down to its bare essentials. Keith Richards co-wrote "That Feel" and the frontman of Primus played the electric bass on this album. "Dark and raw, Bone Machine is no less enchanting than Waits' previous work despite its sinister edges." The entry closes by saying that "...while each track stands up on its own terms, it is doubtless the cohesion of the album's overall nightmarish tone that so deservingly won Bone Machine a Grammy in 1992 as best alternative music album." Wikipedia says that this album was recorded in the cellar of a recording studio. The album was more stripped down in comparison to Waits' previous outings and is noted for its darker subject matters. Critics were very favourable, and the album performed modestly in the 11 countries where it charted. The album notably peaked at No. 176 in the US, No. 48 in Canada, No. 41 in Australia, No. 36 in New Zealand, No. 26 in the UK and No. 15 in Norway. This album has more of a reason for being on this list than some of the other albums with how wildly different it supposedly is, but five list album is just way too many for Waits. We're cutting this fella down to size. In place of this album, I humbly submit "Blonde" by Frank Ocean for inclusion on the list. I've never listened to the album, and I wasn't particularly fond of Ocean's "Channel Orange" when I listened to it through it through this list, though I do know that it was widely influential in contemporary R&B, which is why I'm letting it through.

I knew he did this kind of thing but also think I didn't really know. As a big fan of The Heart of Saturday Night, this was a real treat. One of the best in the business. Sue me but I find him to be slightly more sincere than Bruce and it's not the aesthetic. Lyrics maybe? So good.

Yeaaaah okay no, why does tom waits need to have so many albums on this list... All of the songs are so empty and go absolutely nowhere.

I DON' WANNA GROW UP!!

Spooky album

If i could do a zero i would

Proving once again that this list features some absolute pish masquerading as music. This is the umpteenth album from this talentless waste of time and not one of them have been worth listening to before I die.

Enjoyable listen.

This could be the soundtrack to a Monkey Island game.

What is it about me that loves Tom Waits so much? The world may never know 4/5

I'll listen too this again when I'm going through something or maybe when my voice is gone to hear what I would sound like

Not Tom Waits' most acceptable work but that's part of Bone Machine's charm. I really like this album but not his best

I like Tom Waits, I think that all his songs sound kind of the same and I prefer when he really digs into his gravelly, grittiness. It is hard to imagine singing the way that he does earnestly and in front of other people. It always feels like a character. The weird whispering poems over light drums are very Tom Waits to me. His music has an "art" quality in it's weirdness and occasional challenging listening. He has a very outsider/folk artist feeling. No one is meant to dance to Tom Waits, one is meant to be taking out the garbage after a long shift at a restaurant and smoke a cigarette by the back door. Thinking about quitting- both smoking and the job- while he gravels on in the background.

This is definitely one of my favorite Tom Waits album. Waits draws on influences from the NY underground scene to expand his blues and jazz influenced song and its great. Not much else to say.

mickey mouse had one too many packs to smoke

I can just picture the old madman in a dank bulb-lit basement shouting orders: "Bash the broken radiator grille from a '32 Chevy with the bones of an angry nun! Play the guitar through 100 miles of frayed wire that runs through a graveyard in a swamp! Okay now I am going to scream growl apocalyptic monologues about mortality, cheap liquor, decay, and American epiphanies through a drowned man's bullhorn! GO!" Not Waits' best, but even Waits' not-best is pretty damn good.

I don’t always enjoy listening to Waits; his voice is sometimes hard to take, as is the dissonance and grinding of many of the arrangements. But you can’t look away either. These tracks contain multitudes, and despite being always recognizable as himself, Waits is a shape shifter too. I would like to know more about his co-collaborator, aka his wife.

The actual music on the background isn’t half bad but good god is his voice hard to listen to.

The previous Tom Waits album that came through the list wasn't my favorite so I didn't have much hope for this one. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this one. I can see why many haters are out there but I really enjoyed this one.

Raspy-voiced weirdo. Endured it just to see if I could. Glad it's over.

This is actually do get, but I still don't like it. There are plenty of musicians that cannot sing. They hire singers. Tom Wait is just not anywhere near what he proclaims to be.

🕯️💀🕸️👻🦇

I can always appreciate Waits for his music that’s quirky, strange, funny, dark all at the same time. But having to commit to listening to entire album of it is a challenge. Really hard to get past his “singing “ when he’s channeling Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch. And this one winning a Grammy for best alternative album? C’mon…

Certainly interesting and unique. Very haunting. I thought The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me and Black Wings were the highlights. More spoken poetry than songs. Can’t really take an album of this.

Maybe the horseshoe theory of politics also applies to singers… good and bad singers aren’t opposite sides of a straight line, but rather curve close together at the ends. That’s the only way I can justify why people like Tom. Pretty painful listen but some decent enough stuff to round up to differentiate from some of the true crap we’ve had in this exercised. 1.75/5

Tom is unique

Definitely not for everyone. But as someone who liked Tom Waits before this but never heard this album, I enjoyed it. It felt weaker than the stuff I'm more familiar with, in my opinion, but the highs were high enough that I'm leaning towards a 4 for this.

Low 2. despite the interesting and unique sound, which is a large part of this project, I didn't like most of the sounds and outright disliked a few. I think there is too much artistic merit here to give a 1, though.

It was okay. Sounds like Tom Waits. Wasn't really in the mood for more at the moment. Album wasn't great enough to pull me out of that.

I'm still nothing close to a Tom Waits fan, but there's enough interesting percussion and (depressing) lyrics here to push this into mid-range status.

The earth died screaming after being subjected to Tom Waits’ music catalog.

It's one ugly cover, but the songs are good. Very strong voice.

Not for me

A great album, but not Tom's best. Some vast inconsistency- features two of his all-time best: "Goin Out West" and "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" are absolute classics and the lyrics are incredible "I MIGHT CHANGE MY NAME TO HANNIBAL...OR MAYBE JUST REX." Grungy alt country goodness. On the other hand, some tracks go on too long and the tracklisting is a bit head-scratching. Overall, I would not call it one of the best albums of 1992, but it absolutely has some of the best songs from the year. P.S. Fuck the smarmy-ass top review. Wish I could swirly that shitstain

Absolutely glorious. Tom Waits spends many of his albums crafting seedy tales of a blood-soaked world, and narrates them with all the gravitas each deserves. He knows just how to deliver each one too - be it a sultry low voice monologuing about a demonic figure who's drawn the fear and admiration of others, or a croaking croon on a murder ballad in a barn, or an ugly falsetto underpinning the inevitable fact that we all die some day, his voice always fits each story. The way he sings and crafts these narrative worlds, it's as if he's some shade that has been wandering for hundreds of years, in the back alleys and dead-end bars, observing humanity at its lowest either personally or morally, and conveying those wretched tales of pain and sorrow to us. Just astounding stuff - there really isn't any musician I can think of who so thoroughly crafts a narrative world as Tom Waits does. Easily a 9/10, at least.

George Lucas was clearly inspired by Tom Waits when he added Joh Yowza to the special edition of Return of the Jedi because that’s exactly how Tom Waits sings for most of this album. What a terrible experience. To start, any instrumentation was nearly nonexistent for like half the songs. And if there was any, it was completely overpowered by a truly awful voice to listen to. Legit felt like I was being pranked. Wait, there’s FIVE of his albums on this list? This has to be an elaborate joke.

How awful. Gotta respect a full commitment to the bit though. This must be the exact bone music Tom Waits envisioned. It's terrible. But I can recognize the artistic merit behind it. It was painful to get through the whole listen. I admittedly cannot think of anything that sounds like it. I could feel my musical palette growing with every song. But I hated it.

Tom Waits is always an interesting listen because he does about 75 different types of song per album but he still keeps a cohesive feeling with his very distinctive voice. That said, there's stuff on this album like In the Colosseum that is a tough listen, even with an open mind. I think the second half is SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than the first, almost as if he's trying to scare you off. I love a murder ballad. There's a lot to get through it. Still good but I have some hesitancy about going 4.

How can anyone stand to listen to that? The vocals are absolutely horrible, and there's nothing notable in there.

I’ll be honest. I saw that this was a Tom Waits album and I groaned. This is my fifth (and final) album of his in this list. I tend to dislike most of his stuff. The prior four albums each got 2 star ratings from me. I’m not a fan. The first track on this album made me think I was in for a miserable 50+ minutes. But dammit, this album is a masterpiece. I don’t understand it myself! I still don’t love his voice, and don’t understand many of his pretentious lyrics, but the rhythms and the overall tone made the whole thing so much more than the sum of its parts. I’ve gotta hand it to the man, he got me with this one.

This was new to me, and right up there with Rain Dogs. Fantastic stuff

Tom Waits is very much hit and miss for me but this is firmly in the ‘hit’ side. This album just draws me in. Love it.

This was new to me and enjoyable. Did a good job of setting and sustaining a mood. Preferred it to the previous TW album on here. Would revisit.

Really, more TW, when will it stop? Always never better than ok. 2 stars, probably worth one but I always feel the peer pressure. Tom.

This sounds like a parody of someone making fun of a singer that does weird voices. If it was that it could be funny but it's not. Not much here for me. I guess there is a couple interesting things happening. Some blues songs which waits voice works better for

Never heard it before but excellent

An album I'd heard coming into this and it continues the wonderfully weird, 'junkyard percussion meets cookie monster vocals' approach of his preceding albums and bristles with an undeniable energy and sinister tension that makes for a totally compelling listen. I also hadn't realised until now but the main 'hook' for Dirt in the Ground is sampled by Everlast on his track I Get By

I love Waits’ voice and there are some tracks that are very moody but then there are others that sound uncomfortable. Not bad, just not soemthing I have a desire to listen to again.

More or less insufferable. The music is interesting, but it cannot make up for his particularly unlistenable growling and howling on this album.

*tom's porn name

Que mierda es esto?.....

No. Weird yet bland but not in a mystic way but more moany

I really like Tom Wait's performative approach to his art. It's really good and affective, but sometimes it covers up the greatness of his songs.

Man’s got a voice like a bag of rocks going through the tumble cycle on a side-loading washing machine. I find this marginally more listenable than when I last gave Waits a shot 20 years ago. 1 down, 4 to go. Dimery, you sadist.

His lyrics are great here and I just love how this one sounds. Very much does sound like he recorded this in a cellar. Probably my second favorite album of his I have heard. Favorites were The Earth Died Screaming, Dirt In The Ground, Who Are You, Goin’ Out West, and That Feel.

I don’t want to meet the guy whose favorite Tom Waits album is this one.

I don't like Tom Waits.

God I despise Tom Waits.

I'm not aware of this album and I don't think I recognize any of these tracks by title. I have some idea of what to expect here, so I'm not necessarily going in blind, but this is also the first time I'm listening to this album. I quite enjoyed this. It's not _great_ but it's certainly a vibe.

I like it, but wouldn’t choose to listen to it often

???

I like Tom Waits, but I really can't tell the songs apart

Definitely the inspiration for Vic reeves pub singer