Which is the best (or, which is your favorite) Tom Waits album?

Too difficult. The man's never done a bad album, maybe save One For the Heart which is a bit hammy, even for Waits. There are albums I like less than others - Mule Variations was a bit dirgy, Closing Time a bit too schmaltzy, Heartattack and Vine had a lot of filler, and Blue Valentine seemed to be runnning low on new ideas.

That said, the soundtrack work on The Black Rider, Blood Money and Alice are all superb, evocative and frightening; Bone Machine was a massive turnaround, almost industrial in its way; Small Change and Heart Of Saturday Night are hilarious, heartbreaking early releases.

But it's the eighties "Frank" trilogy containing his best work and I can never decide which is best. They exhibit pretty much the whole panoply of Waits's influences; from Gothic bellringing to death-row blues, forelorn love paeans to cauchemare cinematics -they've got them all.

Picking one out of the three is so difficult. Franks Wild Years is a concise yet eclectic piece of work, and solidyfies his vision of the time, Rain Dogs contains some of his very best songs (among them the title track and "Downtown Train". But as far as consistency is concerned, I'm going to go for Swordfishtrombones. It's just too too good, and what is most impressive is that it is the first of Tom's second phase where he shifted from being a beaten-up crooner singing Bukowskian tributes to wine and women, to someone who has slipped down even further into a nightmare world tottering between fantasy and reality - a mind so tormented and addled that it sees visions of monsters and war down there in the gutter. Yet it's all delivered with the wry wink of an intellectual drunk, mitigating the misery and downtroddenness and often making the audience laugh along with him.

thanks grozart, excellent post.

anyone else?

really hard, and predictably I probably pull out Rain Dogs more often than any of the others. Orphans runs really really close though.

I am voting the 3 disc boxed set under the basic principle that more Tom Waits = better Tom Waits.

Voted "Small Change" because the wierdest moments of "Swordfishtrombones" are just too weird.

can't argue with Small Change, Geir...

...just your logic for choosing it.

I think I've played 'Small Change' the most and enjoyed for the longest term, but in the last two years I've played 'Mule Variations' a lot and I've been forced to listen closer each time ... so 'Mule Variations' it is ...

its either swordfishtrombones or rain dogs or bone machine or alice i dont care which

voted bone machine

"Rain Dogs" by a really really wide margin

I still kinda like him but rarely break my old cassettes out. He's someone who was more entertaining/mysterious/interesting to me back before I was familiar with a lot of his reference points (70s Beefheart, Muddy Waters, etc.) Also alcoholism/homelessness not really interesting or "romantic" to me any more either.

it's Frank's Wild Years.

then Bone Machine second.

Also alcoholism/homelessness not really interesting or "romantic" to me any more either.

homelessness??!

having only heard a handful of these, I'm gonna go with a somewhat offbeat choice and vote for Blue Valentine.

lots of people love blue valentine - it's not for me sadly.

Blue Valentine is great!

...at the very least, I'd say that Blue Valentine tops both the album that came directly before it (Foreign Affairs) as well as after it (Heartattack and Vine), surely this is not up for debate.

i dunno - Foreign Affairs is a weird album and a real forerunner for the Frank trilogy. It's a bit stilted, but I like it like that - especially the epic Potter's Field. Blue Valentine seems very earnest and try-hard by comparison. Too many show-tune type things and hammy cover versions.

that said, I admit Foreign Affairs has its fair share of hammy moments, although I've come round to really appreciating THAT duet!

also - wtf I'm listening to Tom Waits and it's flipping JUNE! There's something intrinsically wrong with that. Oh well.

bone machine without much contest

sorry didn't mean to come across as "woah look at me voting for Blue Valentine, ka-razy!", I just meant obviously it's gonna get overshadowed by the 80s stuff.

Frank's was the first one I heard, back in the days when I would instantly buy anything anyone anywhere described as "Beefheartian". And liked it enough to instantly purchase the previous two in that initial Island trilogy, as well as that "Asylum Years" comp - all of which I wound up loving even more. For me, that 1-2 punch of Swordfishtrombones / Rain Dogs is pretty damn unbeatable. Such a range of moods, arrangements, characters and weird-ass instrumentation! Before I die, I hope to one day find out where he stole "Hang Down Your Head"'s melody.

Typically for me, I lost interest after Bone Machine. (Always wonder if that was named after the Pixies sont.)

"Song", duh.

i think that while orphans is kind of a cheat, being a comp and all, there are good reasons for it being a good one to select (all the tales from the underground stuff, never let go &c). bone machine, though, maybe, just for hits value. and in case no-one else speaks up for it, closing time, for listening to in the middle of the night syrup value.

Tom Waits - Live At Ebbets Field (1974) isn't his best, but is a good recording of one of his early live shows, just him on the piano and a lot of talking.

er, I mean Dime Store Novels, Volume 1: Live from Ebbets Field. Looking at the price it's fetching, I wish my copy (bought in Toronto for cheap) weren't scratched up a bit.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i'm gonna finally vote in my own poll, and toss my hat in the ring for Big Time. maybe not his best album, but it's such a pleasurable listen! and so fun! and the arrangements are neat! and it's like a greatest hits from his Island albums!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Well that settles it then. I really enjoy The Black Rider and even Real Gone, surprised no votes for either of those.

yeah, i'd say this is pretty unremarkable results. could have done with more love for the 70s albums.

who is benoit christie??

Listening to Franks Wild Years for the first time. It's pretty weird, I think I like it.

disappointed with the lack of love for Blue Valentine. Postcard from a Hooker in Minneapolis is my favourite Waits tune. "Don't have a husband. He don't play the trombone"

I'm currently digging Real Gone a lot.

Not a single vote for The Black Rider!

Would've been mine if I'd seen this

(pleasantly) surprised that Bone Machine finished ahead of Swordfishtrombones.

Could vote for a different album every week.

What a sad poll. Only 1 vote for Alice and not a single one for Real Gone.

It's nice to see the love for Bone Machine, though.

I know it's a live album and the film was a bit of a letdown, but Big Time is a great
record and has *scorching* versions of 16 Shells, Big Black Mariah, Telephone Call
From Istanbul and Way Down In The Hole. Worth checking out for Mark Ribot's lovely
chicken-scratch guitar and wrong note soloing.

not a single one for Real Gone.

Very sad indeed. One of my favorite Waits albums, this.

Can't believe no votes for Blue Valentine, which, after skipping track 1, sounds absolutely perfect to me today

i wonder why i didn't post in this. rain dogs would've been my no 1 choice but blue valentine def second after that

black rider's amazing, i first heard swordfishtrombones when i was 12, i'm still not into it properly

Tom Waits is a poseur.

Nothing wrong with that if the poses are interesting.

totally, but he's convincing in the roles he inhabits while also acknowledging and finding the value and attraction in being a poseur

xp

Yeah, I always wondered how much the guy actually, you know, drinks. By all accounts, I've never heard of him having anything less than a professional show. No stories of him falling off the stage, mumbling incoherently, etc, and you'd think, at some point during a career thing long, the cracks of an alcoholic would show (hi, Hank Jr).

Not that it matters. I don't think Raekwon ever smoked nobody or nuthin.'

I love Bone Machine, despite the maudlin moments.

As I understand it he gave up booze in the 80s.

tom waits does maudlin so well though. my third choice might be closing time - "martha"!!! <3 <3 <3 <3

I think the results are correct, Rain Dogs is the most consistently brilliant of the albums I know. I haven't really tackled his jazzy lounge singer period though, I prefer it when he's all wheezy and clanky.

i mentioned upthread that i was voting for Blue Valentine while the poll was going, and then for whatever reason my vote didn't take.

nighthawks at the diner is surprisingly great

Went looking this afternoon to pick up Anthology of Tom Waits on cd, which is a comp of songs from the 70s mostly. I had it on cassette as one of the first Waits releases I ever bought and it perfectly sums up the pre-Island albums. Anyway, I find out it's never been released on cd!

I'm sure there's some other compilation at this point that covers the Asylum material, but Anthology was so perfectly sequenced that I'm sad no one w/o a turntable or cassette deck will ever get to hear it.

Heartattack and Vine (1980) 0

Kinda sad, this holds a special place in my heart for being the first Waits record I heard.

That and Foreign Affairs are the only older Waits albums I've never heard all the way through. I need to get on it.

Everything he's released in the last 10 or 12 years is a jumbled blur in my head. I should probably sit down and assess them properly sometime soon.

weirdly i just saw that anthology on vinyl at my friend's house this afternoon, i've never seen it before. can't seem to torrent it either.

If I had voted there would only have been three votes in it!

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/tom-waits-bone-machine-round-37-toms-selection/

Was it named after the Pixies' song?