In the few years I’ve been writing for this website, my love of musicians who look/sound like olde-tyme drifters has been well-documented. If an artist sings about hard-livin’ and seems like they could’ve spent several years traveling with the circus through the backroads of Depression-era America, I’m into it. So you can imagine my delight when I heard about this new limited-edition vinyl release of Tom Waits’ Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards.
Scheduled for a December 8 release on ANTI-, this reworking of the 2006 collection of covers, rarities, and new tracks will feature 62 tracks over seven LPs on 180-gram vinyl. There’s also a fancy new booklet plus six tracks more than on the previously released version of Orphans. Robert Christgau deemed the album “definitive,” and fans agreed; the original Orphans was one of Waits’ best-selling releases. New offerings on the vinyl edition include covers of Fats Waller’s "Crazy ‘Bout My Baby" and Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht's "Canon Song.”
In other Waits news, the two-disc collection Glitter and Doom Live was just released on vinyl and CD. The first disc holds the live tracks recorded while on tour in Europe and the U.S., annnnd the second disc “holds nearly 40 minutes of Waits' quixotic ruminations on topics ranging from romantic spiders to injured vultures.” Alllllright! (Now that I think about it, I honestly really would like to hear Tom Waits’ thoughts on romantic spiders.)
This winter, Waits will also be appearing on the silver screen in Terry Gilliam’s upcoming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, alongside Johnny Depp, Christopher Plummer, Jude Law, and the late Heath Ledger, as well as in The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington.
