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Buy Now	Rain Dogs (more) »rank: 1267 by: Tom Waits : essential recording:The middle album of the trilogy that includes Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years, Rain Dogs is Waits's best overall effort. The songs are first-rate, and there are a lot of them--19 in all, ranging from grim nightlife memoirs ('9th and Hennepin,' 'Singapore') to portraits of small-time hustlers ('Gun Street Girl,' 'Union Square') to bursts of street-corner philosophy ('Blind Love,' 'Time'). The album also contains the original version of 'Downtown Train,' which Rod Stewart turned into a smash hit. The image of 'rain dogs'--animals who've lost their way home because the rain has washed away their scent--is an appropriate symbol ...	Buy Now	Swordfishtrombones (more) »rank: 2468 by: Tom Waits : essential recording:The first album of the loose trilogy that also includes Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years, Swordfishtrombones marked a radical departure for Waits, whose avant-garde ambitions became plain not so much in his lyrics or subject matter--the songs here deal, as do his older albums, with hard life on the wrong side of the tracks and dreams of escape and transcendence--but in the music, a sound somewhere between German cabaret music from between the wars and contemporary Manhattan rush hour. Odd time signatures, unusual instrumentation (glass harmonicas and brake drums, among others), and Waits's barked vocals make this one ...
Buy Now	Closing Time (more) »rank: 1036 by: Tom Waits : essential recording:It starts with a sunrise, it ends with 'one star shining,' and in between Closing Time contains an honest year's worth (1973, to be exact) of sweet, melodic, vintage Tom Waits--minus some of the vocal growl and thematic grit of his later stuff (but you can see it coming). Waltzes, lullabies, blues, jazz, you name it. Driving songs and drinking songs, even an honest to gosh country tune: 'Rosie.' There are torchers ('Lonely'), scorchers ('Ice Cream Man'), and back-porch senior citizen love songs ('Martha'): 'Those were the days of roses/Poetry and prose, and/Martha, all I had was you and ...	Buy Now	Orphans [Fold-out Digipak with 24-page booklet] (more) »rank: 4071 by: Tom Waits :Description:The three disc set is packaged in a fold-out digipak with a beautifully designed 24-page booklet, including neverbefore-seen Waits’ photographs. :With these astounding 54 songs (plus two bonus tracks) Tom Waits has added a vital new work to his catalog. The title, Orphans, refers to the songs either being from a range of outside projects, various impulses, and whims, or simply not having found a place on the albums for which they were intended. While that scenario has constituted a stopgap measure for lesser artists, this set stands alongside Waits's finest work. He has shaped it into three separate discs, each ...
Buy Now	The Heart of Saturday Night (more) »rank: 1736 by: Tom Waits : :The Eagles might have covered his song 'Ol' 55,' but Tom Waits was cut from a different cloth than California's other singer-songwriters--he suggested a scruffy beat poet who'd walked out of a forgotten scene of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Waits's beatnik schtick could get old, and he developed into a much more musically adventurous songwriter in later years, but his second album contains some of his best early work, including the sweet romantic blues of 'New Coat of Paint' ('You wear a dress baby, I'll wear a tie'), and his best hipster recitation, 'Diamonds on My Windshield.' Two songs are ...	Buy Now	Small Change (more) »rank: 2733 by: Tom Waits : :The Eagles might have covered his song 'Ol' 55,' but Tom Waits was cut from a different cloth than California's other singer-songwriters--he suggested a scruffy beat poet who'd walked out of a forgotten scene of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Waits's beatnik schtick could get old, and he developed into a much more musically adventurous songwriter in later years, but his second album contains some of his best early work, including the sweet romantic blues of 'New Coat of Paint' ('You wear a dress baby, I'll wear a tie'), and his best hipster recitation, 'Diamonds on My Windshield.' Two songs are ...
Buy Now	Bone Machine (more) »rank: 5467 by: Tom Waits : essential recording:This is Waits's most harrowing album ever, thanks not only to such heartwarming sentiments as 'What does it matter, a dream of love or a dream of lies / We're all going to be in the same place when we die' but also to the ravaged, shamanistic croak with which he delivers them. Death hangs like a bad suit on songs like 'Jesus Gonna Be Here,' 'The Ocean Doesn't Want Me,' and 'Murder in the Red Barn.' But the album is musically entrancing and richly poetic--'Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?' Waits asks a perennially ...	Buy Now	Franks Wild Years (more) »rank: 17941 by: Tom Waits : essential recording:All the voices in Tom Waits' head come out on this CD: the growler (of course), the crooner, the preacher, the screecher, and the Vegas cheese ball. The instrumentation is equally eclectic. (Yep, that's Waits himself playing the 'rooster' on the album's best song, 'I'll Be Gone.') More memorable moments: 'Innocent When You Dream' (both times), the vocal howling at the end of 'Blow Wind Blow,' and the lovely coughing fit after 'I'll Take New York.' Frank's Wild Years is the musical remains of a theatrical collaboration between Waits and Kathleen Brennan, originally staged in 1986. It contains nuggets ...
Buy Now	Nighthawks at the Diner (more) »rank: 12249 by: Tom Waits : essential recording:As tour guide on a trip through the midnight-to-dawn streets of Los Angeles that the beautiful people never see through the smoked-glass windows of their limos, Waits details the lives of hipsters, down-and-outers, and lost causes in latter-day beat poetry and small-jazz-combo arrangements. This live album from 1975 almost has the quality of standup comedy, but the routines are richer and more carefully drawn. Check out the vivid detail, low humor, and hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold emotionalism Waits brings to songs such as 'Nighthawk Postcards,' 'Putnam County,' and a memorable reading of trucker poet Red Sovine's 'Big Joe and Phantom 309.' --Daniel ...	Buy Now	One from the Heart (more) »rank: 6537 by: Tom Waits, Crystal Gayle : :Tom Waits's first full foray into the movie business would have been much more widely praised at the time, and the soundtrack would played today, if the film had not met with bewilderment and accusations that Francis Ford Coppola's ego had created a monstrous, expensive folly. To be sure, One from the Heart is a curate's egg of a movie, but the songs, production, (by Waits's early studio mentor, Bones Howe), and the performances capture pure romance far better than the gauche visuals of the movie. Set over the course of one night, the soundtrack essays the thoughts of a pair ...