Reviews
Ranked #9 in the Village Voice's List of the 40 Best Albums of 1992., Highly Recommended - "...Waits keeps getting weirder--and better--proving that you can live life in sinful disgrace and come out somehow purer in the end...", 3.5 Stars - Good Plus - "...It's a song older than Waits himself--older than Hank Williams, older than Robert Johnson--that Waits is chasing...Albums this rich with spiritual longing prove the validity of that effort...", "...His Best Album Ever....Waits--Poignant, Brilliant, and Original--Is Beyond All Comparisons...", "...Waits doesn't prettify, he just simplifies, as the best storytellers must...shows his roots in the spirituals of black American slaves, gospel, Leadbelly's blues and the Depression folk of Woody Guthrie...weird and wonderful...", "...a musical sideshow; not one full of bogus wonders, but rather, applicable sounds and images. It doesn't have to be all popsicles and icicles, you know. And Tom Waits remains oh-so valid...", "...one of the most singular-sounding albums to come along in some time...BONE MACHINE should be counted among Waits's best efforts--deeply weird, aggressively sardonic and, at its greasy core, painfully humane...", "...The Apocalyptic Howl Which Is Waits' Strongest Calling Card Positively Bowls You Over...", Ranked #13 in Spin's list of the `20 Best Albums Of The Year' - "...leaves you breathless in amazement that anyone could be this friggin' weird and cool...a shining collection of tunes...", "Armed with an ocean of apocalyptic imagery, ragged percussion and a voice that sounds like he just gargled with a flask of whiskey and rusty nails, BONE MACHINE is nothing but raw.", "...The Folk Music of the Post-Apocalypse...His Most Chilling and Darkly Humorous Album to Date...", 4 Stars - Excellent - "...a formidable talent who is surely the true heir to Captain Beefheart...in an era when even the fringes of cultural enterprise are becoming increasingly dominated by market pandering, his is the bravest of stances...", "...BONE MACHINE is minimalist music from hell, played on the bones of sinners and sung through the rusty, ravaged, and perhaps even channeled voice of the devil, who shovels coal through Waits's dreams...", "...You never know when you're going to be shocked, thrilled, or just plain unnerved by some startling image or sound...As modern songwriters go, Waits is one of the few who does matter..." - Rating: A+
