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Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
Universal acclaim
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 134 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Anti
Release Date: 21 November 2006
Discs: 3 discs
Genre(s): Rock
Summary
Unlike typical rarities compilations, this 3-disc set includes 30 brand-new recordings--in addition to the usual mix of covers, soundtrack selections, and other previously uncompiled material. It's like getting three new Waits albums at once.
Also By This Artist: Alice Blood Money Glitter And Doom Live Real Gone
Also On The Web: Anti Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Observer Music Monthly
An outstanding musical creation... that nods to almost every known genre of American music, and some that have yet to be named.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times
It's almost too much, really, but Waits doesn't release albums very often, so you can make it last.
Read Full Review >Playlouder
A colourful, incomparable colossus, a work of breathtaking, staggering genius and no mistake.
Read Full Review >ShakingThrough.net
Orphans is a bravura showcase for the instrument of Tom Waits’ voice.
Read Full Review >Slant Magazine
Each orphan stands proudly on its own as the vestige of an old idea or a forgotten path—proving that even Waits's missteps still manage to point in the right direction.
Read Full Review >Uncut
It's remarkable... how much of a piece the entire set is, reflecting how skilfully Waits has welded the various tributary styles of his art into a seamless whole. [Dec 2006, p.122]
Mojo
Astounding... More even than his Exile On Main St., this is Tom Waits' Basement Tapes. [Dec 2006, p.104]
MSN Consumer Guide (Robert Christgau)
Sure enough, the first time through, too many [of the songs] had faded on me. Soon, however, even ones I'd given up on were bum-rushing my earhole.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club)
Waits may call them orphans, but another artist would call this a career.
Read Full Review >Delusions of Adequacy
This is not Tom Waits’ best record... But the whole package... is riveting, a collection that should humble lesser musicians who only can aspire to the mantle of Waits’ discarded work.
Read Full Review >Magnet
Orphans plays less like a career capstone than Waits' one-man Library of Congress field-recording project. [#74, p.93]
PopMatters
Compiled from various stages of his career, with varying fidelity but weirdly without varying quality, Orphans is the singularly odd cutting-room comp that serves as an equally decent introduction to a career.
Read Full Review >Prefix Magazine
Orphans is something akin to taking a journey through a familiar yet entirely foreign dream-place.
Read Full Review >Dot Music
"Orphans" is that rarity of an album: one that will satisfy hardcore fans as well as the uninitiated.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
Orphans is a major work that goes beyond the origins of the material and drags everything past and present with sound and texture into a present to be presented as something utterly new, beyond anything he has previously issued.
Read Full Review >cokemachineglow
The collection is one of the best releases of 2006 because Tom Waits is one of America’s greatest living songwriters.
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
The end product, neatly compartmentalized into three style-segregated discs, is about as perfect a summary of Waits' appeal as can be found on the open market, a shadow greatest hits that offers testimony to his unique and diverse talents without recycling any of his album material.
Read Full Review >Stylus Magazine
Orphans may not have something for everyone, but what’s missing says more about the listener than the record.
Read Full Review >Billboard
Vast in scope, rich in trope and full of hope. [25 Nov 2006]
Village Voice
This is nightmare music--a blue-collar purgatory made of American mythology and populated by its grotesques.
Read Full Review >Spin
Though the set's marathon length may keep casual listeners at a distance, fans of the eccentric characters, styles, and emotional arcs that compose Waits' oeuvre know there's no such thing as a "casual" Tom Waits listener anyway. [Dec 2006, p.103]
Hartford Courant
Waits is fearless in generating atmosphere and relentless in avoiding polish.
Read Full Review >New Musical Express (NME)
Genius. [18 Nov 2006, p.33]
Paste Magazine
It would be a mistake to dismiss this box set as a bunch of leftovers of interest only to Waits fanatics. There is some filler, it’s true, but there are also more than a dozen songs that rank with his best work.
Read Full Review >Q Magazine
A long, sometimes hard, often inspired haul, this could easily have been pared down to a uniformly excellent double disc. [Dec 2006, p.138]
Blender
The jumble of stuff that spills out -- from Delta blues to nineteenth-century ballads to spoken-word rambles -- is surprisingly consistent, at times transcendent, and not just for people intimately acquainted with Waits’s honeyed craziness.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle
After 30 years, Waits keeps getting weirder and weirder while still aging gracefully.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 134 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Ian B. gave it a10:
Quite easily my favorite artist of all time (or maybe Leonard Cohen ). No he does not have a very nice singing voice, but the emotion that he conveys in his songs is better and more important than a person who can hold a note. Though not his best album it is still amazing...fine Disk 3 is pretty difficult even for me, a Waits fanboy, to swallow but at the price it sells with the number of great songs on it Disk 1 and 2 more than make up for 3 (any why not get some weirder stuff as an added bonus?). It won't beat Blood Money or Rain Dogs or Mule Variations but it will beat pretty much everything else out there.
Timothy A gave it a9:
Life in all its raw woodbine broken doll glory.
Lyn C. gave it a9:
His songs often make my cry. I can't begin to understand why. There is no one like him.
Chris V. gave it a10:
This album is truly a work of art. I pity those on here who don't get Mr. Waits but in a way I'm glad he divides opinion. He's almost a yardstick of musical taste. If you love him, you have it, If you don't, you don't!
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
I love him, however, that being said I can understand how and why some people do not. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, I shouldn't judge those who don't like him and they shouldn't say that he is awful, he just isn't for them.
Eoin B. gave it a10:
After more than a year with this album I'm still lost for words on how best to pay it tribute. Incredibly beautiful.
Dirty gave it a10:
Had always known of him, but this being my first of his albums - amazing. Sure the third lacks the quality of the first two, but the majority of artists in the charts today could not right more than one song of their own, and then play and sing them in away that is so unique and perfect for the lyrics. This guy is special when you get under the surface of that gravelly voice. In fact the voice is the cream on top. I hope those that rated an 0 can put it on again, sit down in the right mood one night ,with a top drop of red, and let go of their Pop ideals.
