| Bone Machine | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | September 8, 1992 | |||
| Recorded | Prairie Sun,Cotati | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 53:30 | |||
| Label | Island | |||
| Producer |
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| Tom Waits chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Bone Machine | ||||
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Bone Machine is the eleventhstudio album by American singer and musicianTom Waits, released byIsland Records on September 8, 1992. It won aGrammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album and features guest appearances byDavid Hidalgo,Les Claypool,Brain, andKeith Richards. The album marked Waits' return to studio albums, coming five years afterFranks Wild Years (1987).
Recorded in a room in the cellar area of Prairie Sun Recording studios, described by Waits as "just a cement floor and a hot water heater", the album is often noted for its rough, stripped-down, percussion-heavy style, as well as its dark lyrical themes revolving around death and decay. The album cover—a blurry, black-and-white, close-up image of Waits screaming while wearing a horned skullcap and protective goggles—was taken by filmmakerJesse Dylan, son ofBob Dylan.[7] The photo is taken from a freeze frame of the Dylan andJim Jarmusch directed video for "Goin' Out West". They also directed a video for "I Don't Wanna Grow Up".Bone Machine won theGrammy forBest Alternative Music Album.[8]
Bone Machine was recorded and produced entirely at the Prairie Sun Recording studios inCotati, California, in a room of Studio C known as "the Waits Room", located in the old cement hatchery rooms of the cellar of the buildings. Prairie Sun's studio head Mark "Mooka" Rennick said, "[Waits] gravitated toward these 'echo' rooms and created theBone Machine aural landscape. [...] What we like about Tom is that he is a musicologist. And he has a tremendous ear. His talent is a national treasure."[9]
Waits said of the bare-bones studio, "I found a great room to work in, it's just a cement floor and a hot water heater. Okay, we'll do it here. It's got some good echo."[10] References to the recording environment and process were made in the field-recorded interview segments made for the promotional CD release,Bone Machine: The Operator's Manual, which threaded together full studio tracks and conversation for a pre-recorded radio show format.
Bone Machine was the first Waits album on which he played drums and percussion extensively. In 1992, Waits stated: "I like to play drums when I'm angry. At home I have a metal instrument called a conundrum with a lot of things hanging off it that I've found - metal objects - and I like playing it with a hammer. I love it. Drumming is therapeutic. I wish I'd found it when I was younger."[11]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [12] |
| Chicago Tribune | [13] |
| Entertainment Weekly | A+[1] |
| Los Angeles Times | [14] |
| Mojo | [15] |
| NME | 8/10[16] |
| Q |  [17] |
| Rolling Stone | [18] |
| Select | 5/5[19] |
| Uncut | [20] |
In a rave review for theLos Angeles Times, Chris Willman wrote that "Waits waxes equally fatalistic on morality and mortality" onBone Machine, and that even "amid all this casual morbidity", the album's "low-fi, home-studio" sounds make the album "so much—in a manner of speaking—fun."[14] "Rhythmically," saidGreg Kot of theChicago Tribune, "it's the most varied and impressive group of songs Waits has written, and damaged voice and all, the tunes are unshakable."[13]Entertainment Weekly's Billy Altman noted that although listeners may find themselves "shocked, thrilled, or just plain unnerved by some startling image or sound" while listening toBone Machine, "beneath his hellacious bellows ... and grotesque arrangements ... lurks a caring, humanist heart."[1]NME writer Terry Staunton summarized the album as "scary, mournful, morbid and easily one of Tom's best."[16]
Retrospectively,AllMusic reviewer Steve Huey deemedBone Machine "Waits' most affecting and powerful recording, even if it isn't his most accessible", noting the album's "chilling, primal sound" and fixation with "decay and mortality, the ease with which earthly existence can be destroyed."[12]
Bone Machine was included on several "Best Albums of the 1990s" lists, being ranked at No. 49 byPitchfork[21] and No. 53 byRolling Stone.[22] The album was also included in the book1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[23]Elvis Costello included it on his list of essential albums, highlighting "A Little Rain" and "I Don't Wanna Grow Up".[24]
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Earth Died Screaming" | Tom Waits | 3:39 |
| 2. | "Dirt in the Ground" |
| 4:08 |
| 3. | "Such a Scream" | Waits | 2:07 |
| 4. | "All Stripped Down" | Waits | 3:04 |
| 5. | "Who Are You" |
| 3:58 |
| 6. | "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me" | Waits | 1:51 |
| 7. | "Jesus Gonna Be Here" | Waits | 3:21 |
| 8. | "A Little Rain" |
| 2:58 |
| 9. | "In the Colosseum" |
| 4:50 |
| 10. | "Goin' Out West" |
| 3:19 |
| 11. | "Murder in the Red Barn" |
| 4:29 |
| 12. | "Black Wings" |
| 4:37 |
| 13. | "Whistle Down the Wind" | Waits | 4:36 |
| 14. | "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" |
| 2:31 |
| 15. | "Let Me Get Up on It" | Waits | 0:55 |
| 16. | "That Feel" |
| 3:11 |
| Chart (1992) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (ARIA)[25] | 41 |
| Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)[26] | 22 |
| Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[27] | 31 |
| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[28] | 42 |
| New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[29] | 36 |
| Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)[30] | 15 |
| Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[31] | 38 |
| Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[32] | 21 |
| UK Albums (OCC)[33] | 26 |
| USBillboard 200[34] | 176 |
The percussion-heavy, bluesy Bone Machine indeed foreshadows future albums like Mule Variations, but remains singular in its tenacious devotion to scabrous, almost uniformly ugly sounds.
Bone Machine is the realest of the real when it comes to stripped-down blues...
More than anything, it's a last chance (apart from concert film Big Time) to hear this incarnation of Waits the rain dog before he shifted gears to the stripped-down blues rock of 1992's Bone Machine.
