There's plenty that's old and beautiful about these Orphans.  Full text...

Waits is the musical equivalent of Marmite, an acquired taste; but for those who savour his eclectic blend of blues hollers, jazz piano, tragic ballads, and found percussion, and all-encompassing grasp of American folk musics, this triple-CD set is a feast of vivid flavours. It's divided into separate discs of Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, roughly correspondent to his surreal roadhouse blues and garage rock; his poignant ballads; and his weirder, uncategorisable pieces (including covers of songs by Daniel Johnston and The Ramones, and a poem by Charles Bukowski).   Full text...

Tom Waits has released a surprisingly coherent collection of new and old songs, covers and originals. Orphans is divided into three discs of rocking blues songs (Brawlers), melancholic ballads (Bawlers), and wild experimentations (Bastards).  Full text...

These musical Orphans finally have a loving home  Full text...

On the one hand, it's a rarities set that rescues 26 odds and sods-- tunes from soundtracks, stage shows, tribute albums and charity discs -- that have been in musical hock for years. On the other hand, it's a new release, with 30 -- count 'em, 30! -- recent recordings. Then, just to make things even more confusing, it's also a trio of concept albums.  Full text...

Orphans is something akin to taking a journey through a familiar yet entirely foreign dream-place. Or possibly what it would be like to peer through a dusty window and watch your weird neighbor alone in his basement, sifting through relics from his past. Maybe reading a five-hundred-page novel authored by an ex-college professor who went insane some years before writing it. Whatever way you qualify it, Orphans is an experience of the most memorable kind.  Full text...

So, it seems "Orphans" is that rarity of an album: one that will satisfy hardcore fans as well as the uninitiated.  Full text...

This three-disc magnum opus separates Waits' major themes by genre.  Full text...

Orphans panders to everything it should: it's a culmination, a slight reimagining, an introduction while a continuation, a celebration of trope and a celebration of singularity, a long tale of alienation, heartbreak, and an acumen for the effects of age; I believe Waits is bigger than this.   Full text...

Orphans isn't really a career-spanning outtake collection at all, what with Tom going George Lucas on the proceedings and splicing in new songs and re-recordings. 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.  Full text...

Orphans is an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink compilation (a designation particularly apt for an artist for whom the kitchen sink is both a promising narrative device, full of potential for cleansing and drowning, and a cheap source of percussion), with some obscure odds and sods (including Waits’ delightful contribution to the Shrek 2 OST) and a double album’s worth of new material.   Full text...

Bawlers is Waits' bread and butter -- professional sentimentalists love the way he mauls slow ones, and six of the soundtrack tunes are here, from Big Bad Love, Pollock and Shrek 2.   Full text...

As Orphans . . . proves, Waits has made brilliant art by inhabiting an arcane world of his own imagination. Road to Peace tantalisingly suggests that, for his next trick, Waits could move his operations into a real world that is every bit as chaotic and bizarre.  Full text...

Great.   Full text...