tom waits' "orphans"

yeah, so there's a new tom waits rekkid -- a three ceedee set, to be exact. i ordered it from amazon for my sweetie the day it was released. a coupla decades of married life and a full one of sobriety seem to be agreeing with him. over the yrs, cat's managed to re-invent himself as a kind of one-man harry smith anthology, encompassing every facet of 'meercun music, occasionally stroking the same synapses as harry partch, captain beefheart (who tom apparently digs), and los lobos at their post-kiko weirdest when he's not penning songs that tug the heart in a way only the work of a _real_ romantic (which, as my sweetie points out, is one who's had their ass kicked around by life enough to dust the illusions off of 'em) can do. orphans: brawlers, bawlers, and bastards (for that's the name he's given it) is a great, sprawling mass o' toonage which'll prolly take a whole yr to fully digest (the way joe strummer said about sandinista! when it was new). the ramones covers are better 'n' different than you'd expect, and i'm wondering whether tom is gonna get a buncha shit for writing a song ("road to peace") about a suicide bomber, but for right now, we've got a new fave song here at mi casa -- that'd be "you can never hold back spring," which tom starts out singing as louis armstrong and finishes as himself. who could ask for more / why settle for less?