1992 in Albums: Bone Machine, by Tom Waits

Which Tom will we get this time?

Bone Machine — Tom Waits

There have always been two distinct sides to Tom Waits: Tom, the great songwriter with a knack for heartbreaking poetry, and Tom, the demented cabaret imp.

Songwriter Tom was beginning to go mainstream in the early 90s, mostly thanks to Rod Stewart covering ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ and ‘Downtown Train.’ He could, if he wanted, have let himself be canonised into the Great American Songbook.

And perhaps that’s why Bone Machine is dominated by the other Tom, the demented imp. It feels at times like a reaction, like a fuck-you to the world of respectable musicianship. The lead single here is called ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Up,’ in which the 43-year-old Waits reels off everything terrible about adulthood.

Bone Machine was recorded in a bare studio with a concrete floor, chosen by Waits specifically for its echo. The room itself becomes an instrument in the semi-live track ‘Jesus Going To Be Here,’ which bounces off the…