12. Tom WaitsBone Machine
I’m pretty sure that this is Waits adventuring into what is his sound. It was the first record I was introduced to, and it’s the vision that I formed of him before meeting him – these plodding rhythms and these kind of like scratchy, very rusty guitars, and this abstraction of a poet. To be fair, it is how I see him now too. He’s more tender than the record implies, but the attic of his mind is very clear on this record, and how it plays out in the farmyard, in the barnyard, in his junk, in his big junkyard. I think that I was never more compelled…the word cool comes to mind. I was just like ‘this dude’s really fucking cool’. I rarely say that too, because I don’t put much on coolness. He’s the kind of cool that…he’s not composed. He’s not too cool for school, he’s cool. He’s rad, he’s not trying to be cool, and he’s really messy. He’s just diggin’ up these little monsters left right and centre…but then, there’s so much of the beauty and the beast about Tom Waits. I’ve learned a lot about contrast from him — because of the kind of beast that he can create, or draw out of himself, and then he retracts into this very tender place, and I think that I’ve carried that with me, because contrast is what I’m looking for, not just in music, but in life in general.
