***1/2 Tom Waits

BEAUTIFUL MALADIES: THE ISLAND YEARS

(Island)

This is an excellent collection from Tom's wild years, that period (1983-'90) when he hooked up with arrangements as strange as his voice -- those rickety-sounding backdrops with a penchant for marimba, or marimba-like percussion. Who'd have thought back in the '70s that this neo-beat croaker would evolve into a somewhat more linear Captain Beefheart? Not me.

The collection also has the virtue of recovering tracks from some of Waits's less riveting albums -- like the Weimar-esque title cut from The Black Rider (though Weimar were never really this weird) and the surprisingly sincere-sounding gospel plea "Down in the Hole," from Frank's Wild Years. Then there are my personal favorites, the sentimental but deranged sounding "You're Innocent When You Dream" and "Downtown Train," which sounds as if he were riffing on the Boss, always a good thing. If you think that 22 cuts by Waits, who recently signed a deal with Epitaph, is a bit much, well, you're right -- but just keep in mind that it's supposed to be funny, and that you're supposed to feel, after a while, that you're the one who's been hitting the sauce and not him.

-- Richard C. Walls