It's the latest fascinating record in an extraordinary career - one that has seen Waits recognised as an eccentric, an innovator, a cult hero, a songwriter's songwriter, a raconteur, an Oscar nominee, a Grammy winner, one of the most influential artists of the modern era, a storyteller, a Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame inductee, and a one-of-a-kind musician.

It would take too many blogs to cover his whole career, so Musicology has picked five of his best albums - apologies if we've left out your favourites.

Heartattack & Vine (1980)

IT was his seventh album, but this nocturnal ramble was many people's first introduction to the wonder of Waits (it was his first record to chart in Australia and his best Billboard performance in the US until Mule Variations nearly 20 years later). Heartattack & Vine closed his eight-year association with Asylum Records and is the last of his comparitively straight-ahead smoky-jazz-club albums before the inventive career left-turn of Swordfishtrombones in '83. Made up of ballads and rhythm-and-blues, H&V has Waits' whisky-and-gravel voice leading you through the down-and-out side of Los Angeles among the loners, losers and lovers. The opening titular number takes you on a late-night stumble to the wrong side of the tracks until you find a happening dive (In Shades) where the crowd chatters over a bluesy bar-room jam vibe. Piano ballad Saving All My Love For You is set in the early morning of the next day, as a church bell rings in the distance and you try to sober up while contemplating going home, only to hit Downtown again, where the drunkard's lovelorn cycle continues (with the beautiful Jersey Girl). When you pull yourself together, you're back on the chase 'Til The Money Runs Out before wondering how you got into this situation (via the broken nursery rhyme of On The Nickel and the vicious stagger of Mr Siegal). Then it's time to say goodbye (Ruby's Arms) and move on to the next town. Few artists can take you on such a journey, but then few artists have Waits' way with words and evocative voice.

Here's Waits in full flight in concert doing the title track:

Swordfishtrombones (1983)

HEARTATTACK & Vine serves as a full stop on the first chapter of his career and Swordfishtrombones is a fresh page. The years between H&V and its follow-up appear to have been revelatary for Waits - he married Kathleen Brennan, he wrote the soundtrack for One From The Heart, receiving an Oscar nomination for his efforts, appeared in a number of films in that time, ditched his manager and producer - and when he emerged on the otherside with Swordfishtrombones, he had a wild new sound. Though the knack for a tender ballad remained - Johnsburg, Illinois is one of the simplest and sweetest love songs he's written - and Gin Soaked Boy harks back to the rhythm and blues of H&V, but largely the album is a whirling, creaking, swaying circus caravan of sound. His focus was still on the outsiders, the heartbroken and the down-on-their-lucks, but the stories and characters had gotten weirder, as had the sound accompanying it. Waits said the album contained a loose narrative about "one guy who leaves the old neighbourhood and joins the Merchant Marines, gets in a little trouble in Hong Kong, comes home, marries the girl, burns his house down and takes off on an adventure...". Marimbas feature heavily, as do odd percussion sounds, and the moods between songs vary wildly - Dave The Butcher is a discordant big-top soundtrack, 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six is a clankier version of Heartattack & Vine, In The Neighbourhood sounds like a dusty Salvation Army band, piano accordion adds a French vibe to the instrumental Just Another Sucker On The Vine, Frank's Wild Years is the dark spoken-word jazz moment when the central character torches his home, and Down, Down, Down is a pacy near-gospel piece that invokes the devil. There are still moments of beauty among the increasing ugliness - Johnsburg, Illinois is a beautiful tribute to Brennan, Town With No Cheer is the sad tale of an Australian town where the trains no longer stop (inspired by his Aussie tour in 1979), and Soldier's Things is a fragile ode to the relics that get left behind - but the width and breadth of style and approach had grown dramatically. Critics were rightly impressed. The album was bright and original, even if the influences were apparent (such as Captain Beefheart and the musical styles of the '30s-'50s), but the combination was exciting and heralded a new era for Waits.

Here's the music video for the bittersweet In The Neighbourhood:

Rain Dogs (1985)

RAIN Dogs, its predecessor and the following Frank Wild's Years are seen as a loose trilogy - "Frank took off in Swordfish, had a good time in Rain Dogs, and he's all grown up in Frank's Wild Years", Waits said. The albums also share a similar Beefheart-meets-Kurt Weill sonic pallette and continue the unconventional instrumentation he'd found on Swordfishtrombones. Where other acts of the era where sampling, and using synthesizers and studio trickery, Waits was more likely to use trombone, banjo, marimbas, accordion and to "bash doors with bits of two-by-four" for percussion. He hadn't totally abandoned the traditional approach of his early albums - the gentle acoustic guitar ballad Time, sung in Waits' least-affected vocal style, would have fit on his debut Closing Time, while the guitar-driven Hang Down Your Head and Downtown Train (the latter made famous by Rod Stewart) weren't as alien as other tracks - in fact they were downright poppy. But Rain Dogs is celebrated largely for its exciting weirdness - the title track is a jaunty guitar-and-marimba stumble past the bums and hobos of New York (who also turn up in the haunting spoken-word 9th & Hennepin), the wild horns of the instrumental Midtown soundtrack a car chase through the same streets, the dark jungle tones of Clap Hands subvert a seemingly familiar nursery rhyme (as does the delicious Spanish espionage of Jockey Full Of Bourbon), Gun Street Girl leaves the city for the Appalachian hills, the funereal howl of Anywhere I Lay My Head rings of New Orleans, and Cemetery Polka is an off-kilter relic from cabaret-era Germany. The album is also notable for the contributions of Keith Richards, whom Waits invited with a "nothing to lose" attitude to play sparse licks and three-note riffs on the R&B swagger Big Black Mariah, late-'50s rocker Union Square and Waits' first genuine country number Blind Love (which Richards also sang backing vocals on). Rain Dogs was written in his new home of New York and was inspired by the characters he'd seen around the city and figures from his past, with the title being his name for the "people who sleep in doorways... people who don't have a credit card" and the "hobos, prostitutes and people in trouble". The album is one of Waits' best loved. It cracked the top 30 in the UK and the top 200 in the US, is often regarded as one of the best albums of the '80s.

Screw Rod Stewart's version:

Bone Machine (1992)

AFTER doing the play/album Frank's Wild Years, some more acting, and the Night On Earth soundtrack, Waits edged closer to the mainstream, perversely by winning a Grammy for best alternative album with Bone Machine (he beat The B-52s, Morrissey, XTC, and The Cure to the prize). It was equally strange that he should get a resurgence in popularity with an album that was even more organic and raw, more clattering and hissing than anything he'd done before. Having moved back to California, Bone Machine was recorded there in an old unsoundproofed storage room connected to a proper studio because Waits preferred the sound in the storage room, where the noise from trains, planes and rain leaked in. It's all part of the unpolished nature of the record, which Waits said dealt with "blood and death... it really is all about bones, cemeteries and dirty blood". His love of found-sound percussion meant the album was almost devoid of a proper drumkit, instead, comprising beats built on anything lying around. It adds up to a weirdly archaic sound, as if the whole album had been dug up graverobbers. The best known track (and one of his greatest tunes) is the oft-covered Goin' Out West, the foreboding tale of an ex-crim heading to Hollywood to become "a leading man", told over a motoring riff and a rock beat built from whacking what sounds like a metal door. Other highlights include his wailing-and-lisping preacher pastiche Jesus Gonna Be Here, the stuttering cha-cha Such A Scream, the wonderous minor chords and scratchy falsetto of Dirt In The Ground, the apocalyptic abrasive clip-clop of Earth Died Screaming, the devilish ringmaster call of In The Colosseum, and the universal petulance of single I Don't Wanna Grow Up (later covered by The Ramones). It all proved that although Waits was already a surprising artist, he still had tricks up his sleeve. The album once again went top 30 in the UK and top 200 in the US.

Great song, slightly disturbing clip - here's the awesome Goin' Out West:

Mule Variations (1999)

WAITS and Brennan dubbed the sound of Mule Variations "surrural" - "there's an element of something old about (the songs) and yet it's kind of disorientating baceuse it's not an old record by an old guy", Waits said. The old-school blues of the '30s and '40s was certainly an influence, particularly on the double-bass and harmonica groove of Get Behind The Mule and loping simplicity of Cold Water, helping to give the record a beautiful "antique-ness". There's a timeless quality to the piano-driven tracks House Where Nobody Lives and the gorgeous Picture In A Frame, plus the slow country-folk piece Pony - all of which could have been written and recorded any time in the past century. The highlights, as with most Waits albums, are as disparate as any tracks he's ever made. He teamed with Primus on Big In Japan, the alternative trio returning a favour from when Waits had guest vocalled on Tommy The Cat (Primus' Les Claypool and Brain had also played on a couple of Bone Machine tracks). The song was built around a tape recording of Waits "trying to sound like a whole band" as he banged on the furniture of a hotel room and it ended up being something of a hit (or at least as close to a hit as Waits gets). Other gems include the paranoid poem What's He Building?, the murky blues Lowside Of The Road, the cheeky Appalachian ode to confectionary Chocolate Jesus, the fat beat funk Filipino Box Spring Hog, and the warm-hearted farewell Come On Up To The House. For such an un-modern-sounding album, it surprisingly proved to be his most successful record to that point in his career, debuting at number 30 in the US and number 9 in the UK. Each of his subsequent studio albums have been released to similar success, thanks to Mule Variations turning a whole new army of fans onto the magic of Waits.

Is Tom Waits actually Big In Japan? I've always wondered (note: music kicks in after about 40 seconds of this clip):