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An outstanding musical creation... that nods to almost every known genre of American music, and some that have yet to be named.
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It's almost too much, really, but Waits doesn't release albums very often, so you can make it last.
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Familiar, compelling, and tugging out empathy.
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A colourful, incomparable colossus, a work of breathtaking, staggering genius and no mistake.
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Orphans is a bravura showcase for the instrument of Tom Waits’ voice.
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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.
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UncutIt'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]
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MojoAstounding... More even than his Exile On Main St., this is Tom Waits' Basement Tapes. [Dec 2006, p.104]
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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.
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Waits may call them orphans, but another artist would call this a career.
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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.
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This set stands alongside Waits's finest work.
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Essential listening.
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Orphans is something akin to taking a journey through a familiar yet entirely foreign dream-place.
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"Orphans" is that rarity of an album: one that will satisfy hardcore fans as well as the uninitiated.
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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.
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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.
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MagnetOrphans plays less like a career capstone than Waits' one-man Library of Congress field-recording project. [#74, p.93]
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The collection is one of the best releases of 2006 because Tom Waits is one of America’s greatest living songwriters.
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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.
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Orphans may not have something for everyone, but what’s missing says more about the listener than the record.
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[The three albums] together make up one very powerful entity.
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BillboardVast in scope, rich in trope and full of hope. [25 Nov 2006]
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This is nightmare music--a blue-collar purgatory made of American mythology and populated by its grotesques.
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A definitive album.
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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.
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Waits is fearless in generating atmosphere and relentless in avoiding polish.
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New Musical Express (NME)Genius. [18 Nov 2006, p.33]
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SpinThough 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]
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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.
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Q MagazineA long, sometimes hard, often inspired haul, this could easily have been pared down to a uniformly excellent double disc. [Dec 2006, p.138]
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After 30 years, Waits keeps getting weirder and weirder while still aging gracefully.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 149 out of 170
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Mixed: 6 out of 170
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Negative: 15 out of 170
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Jon-E.KDec 13, 2007
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SBNov 30, 2006
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DrAwesomeNov 30, 2006