Tom Waits

[Higgs]

Tom Waits is on my list because I am really not familiar enough.

Might want to decompress with another act after Dylan but I cannot recommend the ride enough.

For what it's worth, I believe I have listened to Heartattack and Vine more than any other Waits album this year.

I went through a week long period last year when this was the only album I listened to.

[stip]

I love how "big-budget" it sounds. Wish he got to make a few more albums with this level of production

it’s not a favorite but picking up after you is a good one. it is probably an album I need to go back to.

[Kevin Davis]

I like One From the Heart a lot. "Broken Bicycles" is one of the saddest songs in Waits's catalog, and that's saying something. Up there with the likes of "World Keeps Turning" and "Take It With Me."

[Kevin Davis]

Did you hear the news about Edward?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/two-faced- ... janus-cat/

[stip]

so I have decided I have been away from Tom Waits for too long. I am going to listen to an album a day in chronological order (starting tomorrow) and post about it here. Who is with me?

Closing Time
Heart of Saturday Night
Nighthawks at the Dine
Small Change
Foreign Affairs
Blue Valentines
Heart Attack and Vine
This One’s From the Heart
Swordfishtrombones
Rain Dogs
Frank’s Wild Years
Night on Earth
Bone Machine
The Black Rider
Mule Variations
Alice
Blood Money
Real Gone
Orphans 1
Orphans 2
Orphans 3
Bad as Me

Who has nothing better to do for the next 22 days?

[epilogue]

I hope you copy/paste your previous reactions from the LAL to Tom Waits thread on the old board for compare/contrast purposes.

[VinylGuy]

I ve been listening to a lot of tom these days.

Most of his albums are perfect.

[stip]

I hope you copy/paste your previous reactions from the LAL to Tom Waits thread on the old board for compare/contrast purposes.

Did I do this once before? Who can even remember?

[epilogue]

I hope you copy/paste your previous reactions from the LAL to Tom Waits thread on the old board for compare/contrast purposes.

Did I do this once before? Who can even remember?

It was one of my favorite threads on the old board.

[digster]

I really need to go back through his catalog; there's a bunch I've never heard. I'm not a big early Waits guy thus far, so sometimes it's been a bit of a drag to get through them. But maybe my preferences have changed.

[stip]

I really need to go back through his catalog; there's a bunch I've never heard. I'm not a big early Waits guy thus far, so sometimes it's been a bit of a drag to get through them. But maybe my preferences have changed.

what an opportunity I've afforded you, then!

I am not a huge fan of his early work either. It is really hit or miss for me. The best stuff is utterly sublime, but there is a ton of it that I at best appreciate because I appreciate Tom Waits, but they aren't songs I would care about in a vacuum.

[stip]

Okay, putting on Closing Time. I hope I'm not the only person to listen to it today.

Ol'55: It doesn't take long to setting in but it's always slightly jarring to listen to Closing Time Tom Waits when you predominantly listen to his work after he went to the singing he is famous for.

This is warm, lovely song. It evokes a vinyl feel, even on Spotify. It feels of an older time, but timeless in that you can't quite place it. It sounds like a memory. It's actually a really nice performance, but I've never liked the lyrics (I went lickity splitly doesn't sound good) and there are no real stunning moments. It almost seems like it the song is pandering in some small way.

Still, it is always a better song than I remember it being.

I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You: I love this song. One of the album highpoints - a top 10 from the pre-swordfish part of his career. It's such a simple, direct premise, and the humane sympathy that inhabits all but his most vile songs (and maybe even those) is immediately on display. It's direct and non-performative in a way that is surprising for him. Totally relatable story of someone obsessing over a stranger, building a narrative in their head, and missing their moment. The final line "I think that I just fell in love with you" is surprisingly powerful, given how well the song set the moment up.

Virginia Avenue: This feels like it could have fit in nicely on Heart on Saturday Night. In hindsight, this is a song he would go on to write a dozen times, with different characters. But the template is here. This feels like a two in the morning song (hah, he just gave the time in the song right after i wrote that line). I totally forgot about this song. Pretty solid when you're in the mood for this side of him.

Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards): My favorite song on this album, and probably a top 5 from his early period (just did a mental check, and it just squeaks in). this seems like a song that should have been covered a million times. I wonder why the guitar playing disappeared from his repertoire for the next 4 albums. It is striking how unadorned these lyrics are, but how effective they are. He is so good at getting to the core of an experience.

Midnight Lullaby: Another song whose name I remembered that I totally forgot about. This is a lesser song (has a prototype feel - something he will come back to, in a better way, later on) - it feels a bit like it is retreading the same ground Virginia Avenue just covered, even though this is about a couple at home, and Virginia Avenue is about a guy wondering around feeling lonely. Everything on this album is smooth and easy to listen to, and so if you're looking for a quiet, bar jazz number this can wash over you and do the trick. It's just that I am rarely looking for that.

Martha: This was one of the first Tom Waits songs I ever heard (possibly the second. Innocent When You Dream was the first). This is an incredibly powerful song, especially if you don't come back to it often, and I don't. Just emotionally devastating in its bittersweet longing. It's all in his words and the humanity in his performance, which elevates the lyrics in powerful ways. The writing is very direct, and fairly simple (with 1-2 exceptions there are no amazing turns of phrase here). But the performance (from a guy in his early 20s, I assume?), completely inhabits the shuffling discomfort and years and years of regret of an older man. It is astonishing, actually.

"And I remember quiet evenings trembling close to you" is a devastating final moment

Roise: This always reminds me of Ol'55, and almost everything I said there applies here. It's a really nice performance, and a love letter to a type of urban romanticism that is a constant in his Asylum work. Not a song I would seek out, but one I should probably include the next time I make a massive Tom Waits playlist (which I'm guessing will be after I go through the albums)

Lonely: This is one of the weaker efforts on the album. I feel like this song needs a character to ground it and give it an emotional core. I don't know who is singing this, and he does such an amazing job situating every other song in a particular person, and it makes the comparatively simple writing feel real. This just floats past without anything to grab on to, though the brief "I still love you/I still love you" at the end, works well. It would be even more powerful if I was tracking a person

Ice Cream Man: This is a fun little number that is a nice little infusion of energy on a very low key second half of the album. Not an all timer, or even a song I'd seek out on its own, but it works well enough in the context of the album

Little Trip to Heaven: Probably the best version of the Virginia Avenue, Midnight Lullaby, Lonely run of songs that all seem to be trying to do the same things. It's not what I'm looking for, normally, but again in the context of the album and the space it creates it works well. He generally does this better on Heart of Saturday Night

Grapefruit Moon: I like this one - feels like the prototype of the sweeping piano ballads that he does on to do so well, and the writing starts to combine the character study with some of the lyrical abstractions that he is so good at. Controlling for the change in voice, you can start to draw a line from Grapefruit Moon to Tom Taubert's Blues. Not sure how often I would seek this out since he goes on to write the same kind of song to even greater effect so many times, but it's cool to see where it begins, and it benefits from the mood of the album. "Now I'm smoking cigarettes and I strive for purity. And I slip just like the stars into obscurity" is a really nice lyric - honest and self aware.

Closing Time: Is this the only instrumental in the whole catalog? I think there may be one on Foreign Affairs and Heart Attack. It is an appropriate last call to send the album home, and it works for me having just listened to closing time, but I'm not going to seek it out on its own.

Closing Time is an album I rarely go back to beyond a few songs I know I really like. It works better than I remember as a full album. Even the lesser songs go down smooth and it creates such a consistent mood and feel that everything is elevated by what surrounds it. Everything is easy to listen to, but not everything lingers. There is a simplicity to the songs that fast disappears, but the core of so much of what he is about is present from jump. The character based songwriting, the 2 AM romanticism, the refusal to judge people for being people are all in their infancy, but the key components of what will make him Tom Waits are all here. And I write that in total hindsight. There is a shocking degree of maturity to the performance (Martha, especially), even as he is clearly trying to figure out what it is all about.



Album highlights: I Hope that I Don't Fall In Love With You, Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards), Martha
Near Highlights: Ol'55, Rosie
Pretty Good: Virginia Avenue, Ice Cream Man, Little Trip to Heaven, Grapefruit Moon
Don't Need: Midnight Lullaby, Lonely, Closing Time

[Jorge]

"Closing Time" the instrumental closer is the only song from Closing Time the album that I still listen to with any frequency

[Jorge]

Closing Time: Is this the only instrumental in the whole catalog?

No, he has a bunch

[oasisfan35]

Listened to Bounced Checks last night while reading Lanegan's memoir. Normally I gravitate toward instrumentals when reading but for whatever reason random Waits albums have been getting the nod for this one.

[stip]

Closing Time: Is this the only instrumental in the whole catalog?

No, he has a bunch

There is one on Rain Dogs, too, actually. Swordfishtrombones, maybe? I guess these were the songs I'd always skip

Oh, and a lot of Black Rider, I think. And Knife Chase on Blood Money. What a stupid comment I made.

[Jorge]

Closing Time: Is this the only instrumental in the whole catalog?

No, he has a bunch

There is one on Rain Dogs, too, actually. Swordfishtrombones, maybe? I guess these were the songs I'd always skip

Oh, and a lot of Black Rider, I think. And Knife Chase on Blood Money. What a stupid comment I made.

Two on One From the Heart, three on Swordfishtrombones, two on Rain Dogs, a bunch on the Night on Earth and Black Rider soundtracks, two on Blood Money, "Fawn" on Alice, at least one on Orphans... I'd say he has more than most artists. And they tend to be pretty good.

[Kevin Davis]

Closing Time was my first Waits album. I rarely listen to it, but reading Stip's review reminds me that I really like it and that I'm overdue to give it a spin. You hear a lot of different directions he could have taken on there; it's interesting that he basically just chose a dirtier, grimier version of all of them.

A few years ago for Christmas my brother gave me the two Tom Waits "Early Years" compilations, which I ended up really enjoying as well.

[digster]

Going to try to do this today, though it probably can't happen until later.

[stip]

Closing Time was my first Waits album. I rarely listen to it, but reading Stip's review reminds me that I really like it and that I'm overdue to give it a spin. You hear a lot of different directions he could have taken on there; it's interesting that he basically just chose a dirtier, grimier version of all of them.

A few years ago for Christmas my brother gave me the two Tom Waits "Early Years" compilations, which I ended up really enjoying as well.

I think I listened to each of those maybe twice, many years ago, and never went back. I don't recall either one, really. If I don't need a break when I'm done with this adventure maybe I'll throw those on.