Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
- Tom Waits
- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100A colourful, incomparable colossus, a work of breathtaking, staggering genius and no mistake.
-
100Astounding... More even than his Exile On Main St., this is Tom Waits' Basement Tapes. [Dec 2006, p.104]
-
100It'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]
-
100Each 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.
-
An outstanding musical creation... that nods to almost every known genre of American music, and some that have yet to be named.
-
Orphans is a bravura showcase for the instrument of Tom Waits’ voice.
-
Familiar, compelling, and tugging out empathy.
-
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.
-
It's almost too much, really, but Waits doesn't release albums very often, so you can make it last.
-
Waits may call them orphans, but another artist would call this a career.
-
90"Orphans" is that rarity of an album: one that will satisfy hardcore fans as well as the uninitiated.
-
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.
-
Essential listening.
-
90Orphans plays less like a career capstone than Waits' one-man Library of Congress field-recording project. [#74, p.93]
-
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.
-
90This set stands alongside Waits's finest work.
-
90Compiled 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.
-
Orphans is something akin to taking a journey through a familiar yet entirely foreign dream-place.
-
The collection is one of the best releases of 2006 because Tom Waits is one of America’s greatest living songwriters.
-
84The 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.
-
Orphans may not have something for everyone, but what’s missing says more about the listener than the record.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 84 out of 92
-
Mixed: 1 out of 92
-
Negative: 7 out of 92
-
Jon-E.K8
-
SB10
-
DrAwesome9