In 1999, scraggly-voiced junkyard wizard Tom Waits released Mule Variations, his first album in six years. The big punk label Epitaph started its offshoot imprint Anti- specifically to release Mule Variations, and that imprint is still going strong today. Mule Variations is a great record that was also a huge success, selling 500,000 copies and winning a Grammy. Now, Waits has shared a previously unreleased version of the Mule Variations song “Get Behind The Mule” — an actual “Mule” variation, if you will.

It’s actually a few months late to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Mule Variations, which came out in April, but we’re doing it anyway. In the album, “Get Behind The Mule” is a jazzy seven-minute blues pastiche, with a sinister bassline and a whole lot of harmonica-honking. Today, Waits shares the song “spiritual” version. It’s shorter, with way more minimal instrumentation. And unlike the original, this one really shows the full power of Waits’ elemental, emotional roar of a voice.

It’s so rare that one of these previously unreleased alternate versions of a song is better than the one that actually came out, but I think that’s what we’re dealing with here. These days, Tom Waits is still kicking, but he seems to be mostly done with making music. He appears on the upcoming solo album from the Melvins’ Dale Crover, but his own last album Bad As Me came out 13 years ago. So it’s a treat to hear a new-to-us Tom Waits song. Below, listen to both versions of “Get Behind The Mule.”