Tom Waits
Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards

THE REVIEW

56 orphans... that's a lot. Enough to fill three dormitories, so let's organize: troublemakers over there, criers in the middle, bastards at the back... and it's already better, because at least now there's an arrangement for the night, but all this vocal and noisy humanity is full of stories to tell, each one has their own, bizarre, frightening, tormented, hallucinatory...

... but all the stories have the same voice, that of Tom Waits. In the works for years, Orphans is a monumental piece that gathers all (or almost all) of the songs the Californian artist has scattered in films, operas, tributes, and so on, which had never found an organic and worthy placement. Orphaned, indeed. Many will remember among these "Fall Of Troy" from "Dead Man Walking", "You Can't Never Hold Back Spring" from "The Tiger and the Snow" or the beautiful "Little Drop Of Poison" from "Shrek 2". It's clear that the most faithful and dedicated Waitsians will already possess much of that material, but to these rarities are added no less than 30 new pieces, like the splendid and mournful "Road To Peace", also the result of the historic authorial partnership with his wife Kathleen Brennan. The box set consists of three different albums, which upon listening reveal themselves as distinct and perfectly autonomous works, each characterized by its own particular mood.

"Brawlers" is the album of the blues/rock songwriter with a dirty and rusty sound, "Bawlers" gives us back the iconic Tom Waits pianist of the smoky night ballads while "Bastards" represents the experimental musician, the eccentric and bizarre genius who recites Kerouac and Bukowski with a touch of sonic delirium. There's something for everyone, frankly, for all tastes and moods, and also for record enthusiasts because the packaging is as precious as the content: the sturdy book-like, cardboard box contains, in addition to the three CDs, a very substantial booklet, including all the lyrics and a beautiful photo album, printed on excellent matte paper. The menu is completed with some reinterpretations ranging from the Ramones to Kurt Weill up to gospel and traditional songs, all perfectly deconstructed and reconstructed to fit a rain dog, with the help of the musicians involved, who are mainly trusted companions like Marc Ribot, Larry Taylor, Joe Gore, Greg Cohen, and many other "guests" like John Hammond and Les Claypool.

We are faced with an imposing work, a fresco of humanity and poetry that's not even easy to grasp in its entirety: the three hours of music on Orphans would be enough in quality and quantity to guarantee a complete and glorious career on which anyone could live on rental income. Countless are the suggestions, the characters that populate these songs which are often true stories; innumerable are the inspirations, as well as the many faces of this extraordinary poet and musician capable of giving life to the darkest anxieties as well as the whitest passions, always with the same vivid evocative power that makes bizarre, cruel, moving, gothic, bizarre, dramatically true or imaginatively metaphoric stories pass before our eyes, but always capable of speaking to the intellect, the gut, and the heart. In other words, Tom Waits.