FOURTH SPIN
I suppose after all it's inevitable. When you download as much music as I do, often without even knowing anything about the artist other than they look like someone you might enjoy, or that you've been recommended their music, and that same music can stay unlistened to on your PC for months, sometimes years, then there is going to be some sort of percentage of what you download that you are not going to like.
And so it has proved with the first three “Spins of the Wheel”. Since I began this section, the intention being to randomly select an album from my collection and review it, no matter my feelings on said album, I have to date had three strikes, as the Americans say. The first two were albums I didn't like, or hadn't listened to (then didn't like when I did), and the third was what I would class as a “meh” album: it was ok, but it didn't blow my mind. Up until now, the Wheel has not been kind to me. But all of that is about to change.
Finally, the winds of fortune have blown favourably upon me, and the random album selected this time around is one I not only like, but love, and one I know a good deal about, being a big Tom Waits fan.
Blue Valentine --- Tom Waits --- 1978 (Asylum)
As I mentioned a short time back when I featured the opening track in the section “Head start”, you just never know what you're going to get with a Waits album, and this is no exception. His fifth (not including the live “Nighthawks at the diner”) album, it's as ever an eclectic mix of styles, and how much more eclectic can you be than to kick off your album with a showtune, but that's exactly what he does. His version of “Somewhere”, from Leonard and Bernstein's “West Side Story”, is, shall we say, unique? Delivered in his characteristic growl, it's a song that at first you would not see as suiting his singing style, and yet for all that (or perhaps in spite of it) the song works really well.
Waits often sings like a drunk, slurring his words and mumbling his delivery, but if you are a fan of his music you'll know that he never gives less than a hundred percent for any song, and once you've acquired the taste there really is no-one he can be compared to, living or dead. A mix of blues, jazz, lounge, soul, country, hard-edged rock, gospel and even swing, along with a few other styles which defy categorisation, which seem just to have been invented by him, make for a complex and interesting musician who never fails to surprise, impress and occasionally shock, but always delivers satisfaction. I can't really point to a Waits album I haven't thoroughly enjoyed.
So, “Somewhere” gets the album off to a somewhat unsettling start, with its orchestral arrangement, beautiful sax playing by Frank Vicari and Herbert Hardesty, all juxtaposed against Waits' slurred, drunk-sounding croon, but if you thought that was going to be the tone of the album, think again! You really have to be quick on your feet when listening to a Waits album, as you quite literally never know what's coming next. And what
is coming next is “Red shoes by the drugstore”, a jazzy, bluesy bouncer carried on sweet bass lines, muted drumming and flourishes on the guitar, with Waits at his streetcorner storyteller best, making an assignation with his lady. Like many of his songs, “Red shoes” is full of gangland imagery, streetpunks hanging out on every corner, watching from the darkness, avoiding the sweep of the flashing lights of the police as they cut through the night.
It's a short song, and in fairness quite repetitive, but doesn't suffer from it, but it pales beside the classic “Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis”, driven almost entirely on tinkling piano as Waits reads the letter sent to him by a “lady of the night” he is acquainted with. She tells him that she's ready to be clean, lead a normal life, that she's got married and has a baby now, but it all turns out to be a shakedown for money for her lawyer. It's a deeply disturbing song in its subject matter, the moreso when you find out at the end (sorry for the spoiler!) that it's all lies, and the woman is not going to change. The simple piano melody serves to highlight Waits' deep and sonorous voice, and it contains some classic Waits lines, like
”Everyone I used to know/ Is either dead or in prison”. You just get the sense at the end of Waits crumpling up the card, shaking his head as he tosses it into a trashcan, knowing that people don't change.
“Romeo is bleeding” is, lyrically, a revisitation of the themes in the title track to 1976's “Small change”, with more street gang metaphors, and the story of one who pushed his luck too far. It's carried on upright bass and sax, with a great swing beat, and Waits' incredible eye for rhythm that makes the lyric, although sung almost at odds with the melody, mesh perfectly and create a cool little song. Great organ from Charles Kynard adds some real atmosphere to the song, while the sax just takes it to the top, but as ever it's Waits' laconic telling of the tale of Romeo the hood that grabs and holds your attention.
The shortest track name ever on a Waits album, I believe, “$29”, or “Twenty-nine dollars”, is another song of life on the street, on a great blues melody, and at just over eight minutes is the longest track on the album. Tinkling, echoing piano and sweet electric guitar carry the song, which just sways along on a rhythm that reeks of the very best of the blues. More great lines:
”Cops always get there too late/ Always stop for coffee/ On their way to the scene of the crime/ Always try so hard/ Just like movie stars/ But they couldn't catch a cold/ Baby, don't waste your dime!” and
”Streets get so hungry/ You can almost hear them growl!”
Everywhere you look on this album there are great tracks. “Wrong side of the road” is a Bonnie-and-Clyde style ballad, driven on lowdown sax and squealing organ as Waits prepares for a crime spree with his lover. Waits' lyrics just continue to impress, and often amuse:
Strangle all the Christmas carollers/ Scratch out all their prayers/ Tie 'em up with barbed wire/ And push 'em down the stairs!” Remind me never to go carolling outside Waits' house! It's a slow, bluesy/jazzy ballad with again a great beat, and providing an insight into a character who just doesn't care what he does, who he hurts or who he kills, or indeed whether he's killed himself. As he declares as the song comes to a fading close
”With my double-barrelled shotgun/ And a whole buncha shells/ We'll celebrate the Fourth of July/ We'll drive a hundred miles an hour/ Spending someone else's dough/ Drive all the way to Reno/ On the wrong side of the road.”
So this review is turning out to be a bit longer than expected, but really, you can't rush through a Waits album: it just demands your fullest attention. And to be honest, there's very little persuasion needed, with songs the calibre of “Whistlin' past the graveyard”, where Waits goes at his most manic, a swing, big band type rhythm, with the ubiquitous sax leading the way, or the hard-edged “Sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun”, with its tale of seedy motel encounters with less than legal young women, set to the basic melody of “It's raining it's pouring”, the children's nursery-rhyme actually included in the lyric by Waits, no doubt with a lopsided grin and a tip of his cap.
But the standout track has to be the heartbreaking “Kentucky Avenue”, where Waits sings to his crippled friend, making believe they're going to run away together. It's a supremely powerful song that just drags at your heartstrings, and when you realise (again, apologies for the spoiler) that the friend he's talking to is lame, the tears aren't long in coming.
”I'll take the spokes from your wheelchair/ And a magpie's wing/ And I'll tie them to your shoulders/ And your feet /I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad/ Cut the braces off of your legs/ And we'll bury them tonight/ Out in the cornfield.” The song is again a simple piano melody, the sparseness of it somehow making it a deeper, more meaningful song than perhaps it would have been with a full orchestra behind it.
Another ballad ends the album, and it's the title track (with just the addition of an “s”, to make it “Blue Valentines”), a ballad wrapped in barbed wire, on a lone guitar as Waits cries into his whiskey about the woman he has left behind, the things he has done that haunt him and that he can never change or be forgiven for, least of all by himself. A fitting end to a tremendous album, rightly seen as one of Tom Waits' best. You can't listen to this and fail to be moved: he just has that effect. If this is to be your first steps into the wonderful, disturbing, terrifying, amazing world of Tom Waits, my advice is try to get past his growly voice and listen to what he's singing, and once you lose yourself in his cityscapes and stories, meet his colourful characters and maybe share a drink with them, you may never want to find your way back again.
TRACKLISTING
1. Somewhere
2. Red shoes by the drugstore
3. Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis
4. Romeo is bleeding
5. $29
6. Wrong side of the road
7. Whistlin' past the graveyard
8. Kentucky Avenue
9. A sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun
10. Blue Valentines
Suggested further listening: "Small change”, “Rain dogs”, “Frank's wild years”, “Swordfishtrombones”, “Foreign affair”, “The heart of Saturday night”, “Closing time”, “Heartattack and Vine”, “Mule variations”, “Nighthawks at the diner”, “Bone machine”, “Orphans: Brawlers, bawlers and bastards” and many more....