Product Description

The three disc set is packaged in a fold-out digipak with a beautifully designed 24-page booklet, including neverbefore-seen Waits' photographs.

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Lie To Me
2. LowDown
3. 2:19
4. Fish In The Jailhouse
5. Bottom Of The World
6. Lucinda
7. Ain't Goin' Down To The Well
8. Lord I've Been Changed
9. Puttin' On The Dog
10. Road To Peace
11. All The Time
12. The Return Of Jackie and Judy
13. Walk Away
14. Sea Of Love
15. Buzz Fledderjohn
16. Rains On Me

Disc 2:

1. Bend Down The Branches
2. You Can Never Hold Back Spring
3. Long Way Home
4. Widow's Grove
5. Little Drop Of Poison
6. Shiny Things
7. World Keeps Turning
8. Tell It To Me
9. Never Let Go
10. Fannin Street
11. Little Man
12. It's Over
13. If I Have To Go
14. Goodnight Irene
15. The Fall Of Troy
16. Take Care Of All My Children
17. Down There By The Train
18. Danny Says
19. Jayne's Blue Wish
20. Young At Heart

Disc 3:

1. What Keeps Mankind Alive
2. Children's Story
3. Heigh Ho
4. Army Ants
5. Books Of Moses
6. Bone Chain
7. Two Sisters
8. First Kiss
9. Dog Door
10. Redrum
11. Nirvana
12. Home I'll Never Be
13. Poor Little Lamb
14. Altar Boy
15. The Pontiac
16. Spidey's Wild Ride
17. King Kong
18. On The Road

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2340 in Music
• Released on: 2006-12-05
• Number of discs: 3
• Format: Box set

Amazon.com
With these astounding 54 songs (plus two bonus tracks) Tom Waits has added a vital new work to his catalog. The title, Orphans, refers to the songs either being from a range of outside projects, various impulses, and whims, or simply not having found a place on the albums for which they were intended. While that scenario has constituted a stopgap measure for lesser artists, this set stands alongside Waits's finest work. He has shaped it into three separate discs, each one separately titled after the prevailing character of its tracks and playing with its own mood and dramatic arc. Brawlers favors raucousness and uptempo grinds and grooves, while Bawlers showcases balladry and the more overtly poetic. Bastards is a funhouse of angular characters, spiky anecdotes, shaggy dogs, and even a Kurt Weill cover. The set offers everything from the amped-up rockabilly hiccuping of "Lie to Me" to the breathtaking perfection of "Shiny Things," and from the outraged political reporting of "Road to Peace" to the closing-time lament of "Little Man." --David Greenberger

More from Tom Waits

Rain Dogs	Swordfishtrombones	Closing Time	Franks Wild Years	The Heart of Saturday Night
Small Change	Mule Variations	Nighthawks at the Diner	Bone Machine	Real Gone

Customer Reviews

Fascinating
The old version of Tom Waits, with the jazzy backdrop, lush orchestrations and tales of down-and-out losers and hookers in the dark bowels of the barroom night, seems assuredly gone forever at this point. One can relive those days vicariously through the artist's catalogue for Elektra/Asylum (plus the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's ONE FROM THE HEART), but Waits has rigorously steered away from that previous incarnation since then, recording some of the most willfully idiosynchratic music since Captain Beefheart hung up his skates, as well as some of the most heartfelt songs--you know, with verses and choruses--anyone's ever written. ORPHANS has a lot of both, being a compilation of songs leftover from the sessions for his albums, contributions to tribute albums and soundtracks, fully-realized Waits versions of songs he's written for other artists, and a bunch of brand-new music in the bargain as well. Waits has helpfully sequenced this collection into a CD of loud 'n raucous stuff ("Brawlers"), a CD of ballads ("Bawlers") and a CD of completely unclassifiable material("B**tards), and a lot of it is great. The things that aren't you can skip over effortlessly, because there are enough gems to choose from on each disc, and, in a strange way, the collection serves as a good distillation of how Waits has morphed as an artist from 1983's SWORDFISHTROMBONES onwards. Even if you can't listen to the whole thing in one sitting (at least I can't), ORPHANS is as rewarding as any of Tom Waits' regular-issue albums, postcards from somewhere over the edge....or maybe just around the block. Real good.

Its Tom Waits, and lots of it
Tom Waits has had a great last decade gaining a wide audience of people from all walks of music (this guy is insanely popular with people into death metal as well as people into blues but not the other etc) and ages. Grizzled sea shanties, blues rockers, jungle warbles, garbles of chewed up tape, gourds as xylophones. This is pretty much what you would expect from the Tom Waits as of recently, only instead of a concentrated choice of cuts it appears everything recorded was released as a whole. It seems incomplete ideas and filler get left in, but thats not a bad thing at all . I must say for a guy that has spent the best half of his career mimicking Captain Beefheart (who was mimicking Howlin Wolf) he is making steady progression in sound while still being the same dirty old hat.

Could easily pass for a career retrospective...
...not so much because the music reflects every single phase of Tom Waits' distinguished history (it doesn't really have anything that sounds like his first few albums), but because it's very hard to believe that such a massive and diverse collection of songs could simply be Waits' latest release. Sure, some of these tracks are reissued from the last ten years (soundtracks and other compilations), but for the most part this three-disc collection shows that Tom Waits has apparently got an inexhaustable muse.

"Orphans" is an ideal purchase for both the long-term, diehard Waits fan AND the curious newcomer looking to find out about him. There are so many great songs it's pointless to discuss them all, but I think "Tell It To Me" might be the prettiest tune Waits has ever written. Meanwhile, "Lie To Me," "2:19" and his cover of "The Return of Jackie and Judy" (one of two Ramones covers here) rock as hard as anything he ever did. And for your more wigged-out moods, try "First Kiss" or "The Pontiac" on for size. There's something for everyone!

Special mention goes to "Sea of Love" - Waits turns the original (a fairly formulaic love song fit for high-school dances c. 1962) into a spooky, bluesy moaner, with a brilliant lyrical twist in the chorus.

For an artist to come up with this much new and worthwhile music 35 years into his career is an absolute inspiration.