Tom Waits pulled off a neat trick with the 1983 release of Swordfishtrombones: he disengaged himself from the present (and his own recent achievements) and allied himself with the past. And yet no one could accuse him of becoming mired in nostalgia. A decade before the phrase lo-fi gained favor, Waits purposely ravaged his songs by stomping them into peculiar shapes and utilizing arcane instruments and recording techniques to further bend them into new kinds of aural sculptures. The result was a genuine musical breakthrough. Beautiful Maladies gathers 23 tracks from Waits's seven post-Swordfishtrombones Island LPs. These pretty/ugly tracks provide a riveting view of Tom's wild years. While at least four Waits Island titles qualify as essentials, Beautiful Maladies and the 1988 live set, Big Time, provide compact introductions to a matchless body of work. --Steven Stolder