Bone Machine by Tom Waits

Bone Machine, Tom Waits' 11th studio album and his first in five years after Franks Wild Years, came out on Island on September 8, 1992, and it sounds like it was dug up rather than recorded. He cut it in a bare concrete room in the cellar at Prairie Sun Recording, with Kathleen Brennan credited as producer, and the racket is all bones and clatter: percussion-heavy, stripped to the frame, guitars scraped raw and that gravel-pit voice howling about death and decay like a preacher at a wake. Guests David Hidalgo, Les Claypool, Brain and Keith Richards all turn up to add to the din.

"Goin' Out West" struts like a drunk with a grudge, and "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" turns the title's refusal into a lurching stomp. Jesse Dylan and Jim Jarmusch directed videos for both, and Dylan's freeze-frame of Waits screaming in a horned skullcap and goggles became the cover. It won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

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