Time, from 1973) to last year's experimental masterpiece, Bone Machine, Waits' work has grown consistently stronger, more ambitious and less self-conscious. The Black Rider continues that tradition. Its songs offer the morbid excitement of a ride on a decrepit old Tilt-a-Whirl.

The rich, dizzying tunes incorporate graveyard fright noises, bizarre piano sounds and creepy sci-fi whistles into traditional, orchestrated Fiddler on the Roof-style melodies. A clanking, tin-can beat lurches through the material like a frantic Ichabod Crane, while disturbing violin and contorted blasts of French horn trudge along like drunken, determined sailors.

Waits' wrenching, lounge-loser vocals hawk in ragged, carney-style tones; love songs consist of lines like "I want to build/A nest in your hair." Burroughs' voice hobbles through on his one track like a crotchety passerby – "T'ain't no sin to take off your skin/And dance around in your bones," he moans in a sexier moment – while in others the evil chatter and whining of anonymous tormented souls exude a hysterically pathetic quality.

Although this odd, operatic collaboration with Burroughs and Wilson does not completely fit in with the whiskey-and-bar-stool concept of Waits' previous albums, it does continue his intriguing expansion into more surreal realms. His dervishlike approach to The Black Rider makes you gawk like a freakshow spectator in fear, fascination and delight. (RS 677)

LORRAINE ALI