Music Banter - View Single Post - Trollheart's Album Discography Reviews: Tom Waits

Trollheart · 10-30-2021, 09:44 PM

This then takes us to 1977 and his fifth studio album, where everything changed as Waits assumed a film-noir aspect for the album, and invited the great Bette Midler to contribute. It's not, to be fair, one of his better albums in my opinion, and suffers from some weak tracks, but there are some pretty stupendous ones there to make you forget those ones.

Foreign Affairs (1977)

The first Waits album to open with an instrumental, and that being in fact only the second such, “Cinny's Waltz” is a nice laidback piano tune with slowly rising strings halfway through and finished with a fine sax solo, taking us into “Muriel”, one of the below-par tracks I spoke about earlier. Opening on a piano line similar to some of the introductions on Nighthawks, it's a slow blues ballad with Waits in reflective mood, in tone slightly like “Martha” but much gentler, with again nice trumpet and sax accompanying Waits on the piano. It's only when the song ends that we realise Waits is just muttering about the woman into his beer, as he slurs ”Hey buddy/ Got a light?” One of the standouts is next though, and while it's sandwiched between two pretty poor tracks in my estimation, nothing can dull the power of Waits and Midler together, hissing at each other like alleycats and eventually going home together. Midler is the perfect foil for Waits as she sneers “I Never Talk to Strangers”, and he tries to hit on her. The song begins with her ordering a Manhattan, then Waits's drunken slur as he sidles up to her and sing ”Stop me if you've heard this one” and her snapping ”Did you really think I'd/ Fall for that old line?/ I was not born just yesterday.” The music is again slow and bluesy as she retorts ”You're life's a dime store novel/ This town's full of guys like you” and Waits snaps back ”You're bitter cos he left you/ That's why you're drinkin' in this bar” and they duet on the next line ”Well only suckers fall in love/ With perfect strangers.” At the end of course, they realise they're more alike than they would have preferred to have admitted.

I really don't like “Jack and Neal/California Here I Come”, and really I have to say that only the first part of that sentence is true, as the latter is a cover of the old song, only a few moments of it. But the sax-driven diatribe about Jack and Neal trying to buy ”From a Lincoln full of Mexicans” just doesn't do it for me. It's one of those travelogues he became known for, but unlike the ones on the previous album it just seems like it's missing something. Maybe it's the fact that there's no real tune or melody, just Waits talking over the sax and bass. As I say it then goes into “California Here I Come” at the end, but as far as I'm concerned they're welcome to it. Waits returns to his usage of nursery rhymes for “A sight for Sore Eyes”, though the actual tune eludes me. I know I've heard it before, just can't pin it down.

The song concerns a guy coming back to his hometown and looking for his old mates, but they've all either married, moved on or come to an unfortunate end. It opens with a rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” before Waits in the role of the returning prodigal shows off his riches - ”Have you seen my new car?/ It's bought and it's paid for/ Parked outside of the bar.” - but finds few of his old cronies there to brag to. He meets someone though who tells him ”The old gang ain't around/ Everyone has left town” as the piano carries the tune in that maddeningly-familiar-but-elusive melody. Eager to spread the wealth and show how he's risen in the world he tells the barman ”Keep pouring drinks/ For all these palookas” as he listens to the stories of what's happened to all the old gang: ”No she's married with a kid/ Finally split up with Sid/ He's up north for a nickel's worth/ For armed robbery.”

The longest song on the album is next, and it's an odd one. Riding on a mournful clarinet courtesy of Gene Cipriano with an orchestral introduction, it's the first one I've seen yet where Waits doesn't write his own music, this being created by Bob Alcivar and his orchestra. Waits again more or less speaks the vocal as he narrates the tale of “Potter's Field”, which it seems holds a dark secret. ”Whiskey keeps a blind man talkin' all right” he remarks, adding with a knowing wink and no doubt a tip of an empty glass, ”And I'm the only one who knows/ Where he stayed last night.” It seems to be about a convict on the run, and the music builds up to crescendos of almost forties detective-movie style. Like waves the music rises and falls, punctuated by the bass and the whining clarinet. It's quite a work of art. It comes to something of a climax when he warns ”If you're mad enough to listen/ To a full of whiskey blind man/ You be down at the ferry landing/ Oh, let's say half past a nightmare/ And you ask for Captain Charon/ With the mud on his kicks/ He's the skipper of the deadline steamer/ And it sails from the Bronx/ Across the River Styx!”

But my favourite on the album by a long way is next, and I've written a lot about “Burma-shave” before, so let me just say that it's the tale of a girl who hitches a ride with a stranger out of her one-horse hometown, only to end up dying with him when the car takes a spill on the freeway and crashes into a truck. The music is sad and mournful, almost all piano solo, as if the musician knows what is going to befall the young rebel girl and her new beau. It's so driven by piano alone that it's actually a little jarring when the sax outro comes in, but it fits in well. It's a touching and tragic song, and yet Waits sings it almost with a shrug, as if this sort of thing happens all the time, which it probably does. For every starry-eyed dreamer who makes it out of Nowheresville, USA, there are probably ten who decorate the sides of the road to freedom in wooden crosses or lie in unmarked graves along its length.

Waits being Waits, the next track is based entirely on a bassline with some drums, as Waits visits the barber and has one of those conversations people used to have when they were getting their hair cut but don't seem to bother with any more. “Barber Shop” is great fun and a real exercise in how it doesn't have to take ten instruments and multitracking to make a great song. It's very interesting, and something I never noticed before, that there is no guitar at all on this album. Bass yes, but no lead or even rhythm guitar. The album ends on the title track, a sumptuous piano ballad with attendant strings. It harks back to “Burma-shave” as he sings ”You wonder how you ever fathomed/ That you'd be content/ To stay within the city limits/ Of a small midwestern town.” It's a song of wanderlust without any real direction or target as he says ”The obsession's in the chasing/ And not the apprehending.” It's a really nice relaxing way to close an album which is far from his best, but shines with some real gems.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cinny's Waltz
2. Muriel
3. I Never talk to Strangers
4. Medley: Jack and Neal/California Here I Come
5. A Sight for Sore Eyes
6. Potter's Field
7. Burma-Shave
8. Barber Shop
9. Foreign Affair

When Waits was creating the album he envisaged a film-noir idea, which is certainly borne out on the sleeve and indeed within most of the tracks, which all retain a kind of forties feel to them, with the mention of Farley Granger in “Burma-shave”, Potter's Field harking back to It's a Wonderful Life (though whether that's intentional or not I don't know) and the barber shop, virtually disappeared now. It fits in well with Waits's kind of refusal to deal in the present and remain in his own gin-soaked world of Gene Crouper and Chuck E. Weiss, muttering about kids these days and dreaming of Cadillacs and Pontiacs. Eventually he would drag his feet protesting into the twentieth century (don't tell him it's now the twenty-first!) and open out his music to more modern sounds and techniques, but it would take time.

Waits is a man whom you take or leave: he ain't gonna change for no-one and no record executive is going to press him to write a hit single or use a famous producer on his albums. The grand old man of real music, Waits is a force to be reckoned with and a law unto himself, but when you have this amount of talent that's accepted. A maverick, a trend-avoider and always the guy stuck on the barstool in the corner, muttering to himself, laughed at until he sits at the piano and starts reeling off those sublime melodies, you could use the old cliche Tom Waits for no man, but we all wait to see what he comes up with next.

And what he came up with after this was... breathtaking.

Rating: 8.0/10

10-30-2021, 09:44 PM	#18 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	This then takes us to 1977 and his fifth studio album, where everything changed as Waits assumed a film-noir aspect for the album, and invited the great Bette Midler to contribute. It's not, to be fair, one of his better albums in my opinion, and suffers from some weak tracks, but there are some pretty stupendous ones there to make you forget those ones. Foreign Affairs (1977) The first Waits album to open with an instrumental, and that being in fact only the second such, “Cinny's Waltz” is a nice laidback piano tune with slowly rising strings halfway through and finished with a fine sax solo, taking us into “Muriel”, one of the below-par tracks I spoke about earlier. Opening on a piano line similar to some of the introductions on Nighthawks, it's a slow blues ballad with Waits in reflective mood, in tone slightly like “Martha” but much gentler, with again nice trumpet and sax accompanying Waits on the piano. It's only when the song ends that we realise Waits is just muttering about the woman into his beer, as he slurs ”Hey buddy/ Got a light?” One of the standouts is next though, and while it's sandwiched between two pretty poor tracks in my estimation, nothing can dull the power of Waits and Midler together, hissing at each other like alleycats and eventually going home together. Midler is the perfect foil for Waits as she sneers “I Never Talk to Strangers”, and he tries to hit on her. The song begins with her ordering a Manhattan, then Waits's drunken slur as he sidles up to her and sing ”Stop me if you've heard this one” and her snapping ”Did you really think I'd/ Fall for that old line?/ I was not born just yesterday.” The music is again slow and bluesy as she retorts ”You're life's a dime store novel/ This town's full of guys like you” and Waits snaps back ”You're bitter cos he left you/ That's why you're drinkin' in this bar” and they duet on the next line ”Well only suckers fall in love/ With perfect strangers.” At the end of course, they realise they're more alike than they would have preferred to have admitted. I really don't like “Jack and Neal/California Here I Come”, and really I have to say that only the first part of that sentence is true, as the latter is a cover of the old song, only a few moments of it. But the sax-driven diatribe about Jack and Neal trying to buy ”From a Lincoln full of Mexicans” just doesn't do it for me. It's one of those travelogues he became known for, but unlike the ones on the previous album it just seems like it's missing something. Maybe it's the fact that there's no real tune or melody, just Waits talking over the sax and bass. As I say it then goes into “California Here I Come” at the end, but as far as I'm concerned they're welcome to it. Waits returns to his usage of nursery rhymes for “A sight for Sore Eyes”, though the actual tune eludes me. I know I've heard it before, just can't pin it down. The song concerns a guy coming back to his hometown and looking for his old mates, but they've all either married, moved on or come to an unfortunate end. It opens with a rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” before Waits in the role of the returning prodigal shows off his riches - ”Have you seen my new car?/ It's bought and it's paid for/ Parked outside of the bar.” - but finds few of his old cronies there to brag to. He meets someone though who tells him ”The old gang ain't around/ Everyone has left town” as the piano carries the tune in that maddeningly-familiar-but-elusive melody. Eager to spread the wealth and show how he's risen in the world he tells the barman ”Keep pouring drinks/ For all these palookas” as he listens to the stories of what's happened to all the old gang: ”No she's married with a kid/ Finally split up with Sid/ He's up north for a nickel's worth/ For armed robbery.” The longest song on the album is next, and it's an odd one. Riding on a mournful clarinet courtesy of Gene Cipriano with an orchestral introduction, it's the first one I've seen yet where Waits doesn't write his own music, this being created by Bob Alcivar and his orchestra. Waits again more or less speaks the vocal as he narrates the tale of “Potter's Field”, which it seems holds a dark secret. ”Whiskey keeps a blind man talkin' all right” he remarks, adding with a knowing wink and no doubt a tip of an empty glass, ”And I'm the only one who knows/ Where he stayed last night.” It seems to be about a convict on the run, and the music builds up to crescendos of almost forties detective-movie style. Like waves the music rises and falls, punctuated by the bass and the whining clarinet. It's quite a work of art. It comes to something of a climax when he warns ”If you're mad enough to listen/ To a full of whiskey blind man/ You be down at the ferry landing/ Oh, let's say half past a nightmare/ And you ask for Captain Charon/ With the mud on his kicks/ He's the skipper of the deadline steamer/ And it sails from the Bronx/ Across the River Styx!” But my favourite on the album by a long way is next, and I've written a lot about “Burma-shave” before, so let me just say that it's the tale of a girl who hitches a ride with a stranger out of her one-horse hometown, only to end up dying with him when the car takes a spill on the freeway and crashes into a truck. The music is sad and mournful, almost all piano solo, as if the musician knows what is going to befall the young rebel girl and her new beau. It's so driven by piano alone that it's actually a little jarring when the sax outro comes in, but it fits in well. It's a touching and tragic song, and yet Waits sings it almost with a shrug, as if this sort of thing happens all the time, which it probably does. For every starry-eyed dreamer who makes it out of Nowheresville, USA, there are probably ten who decorate the sides of the road to freedom in wooden crosses or lie in unmarked graves along its length. Waits being Waits, the next track is based entirely on a bassline with some drums, as Waits visits the barber and has one of those conversations people used to have when they were getting their hair cut but don't seem to bother with any more. “Barber Shop” is great fun and a real exercise in how it doesn't have to take ten instruments and multitracking to make a great song. It's very interesting, and something I never noticed before, that there is no guitar at all on this album. Bass yes, but no lead or even rhythm guitar. The album ends on the title track, a sumptuous piano ballad with attendant strings. It harks back to “Burma-shave” as he sings ”You wonder how you ever fathomed/ That you'd be content/ To stay within the city limits/ Of a small midwestern town.” It's a song of wanderlust without any real direction or target as he says ”The obsession's in the chasing/ And not the apprehending.” It's a really nice relaxing way to close an album which is far from his best, but shines with some real gems. TRACK LISTING 1. Cinny's Waltz 2. Muriel 3. I Never talk to Strangers 4. Medley: Jack and Neal/California Here I Come 5. A Sight for Sore Eyes 6. Potter's Field 7. Burma-Shave 8. Barber Shop 9. Foreign Affair When Waits was creating the album he envisaged a film-noir idea, which is certainly borne out on the sleeve and indeed within most of the tracks, which all retain a kind of forties feel to them, with the mention of Farley Granger in “Burma-shave”, Potter's Field harking back to It's a Wonderful Life (though whether that's intentional or not I don't know) and the barber shop, virtually disappeared now. It fits in well with Waits's kind of refusal to deal in the present and remain in his own gin-soaked world of Gene Crouper and Chuck E. Weiss, muttering about kids these days and dreaming of Cadillacs and Pontiacs. Eventually he would drag his feet protesting into the twentieth century (don't tell him it's now the twenty-first!) and open out his music to more modern sounds and techniques, but it would take time. Waits is a man whom you take or leave: he ain't gonna change for no-one and no record executive is going to press him to write a hit single or use a famous producer on his albums. The grand old man of real music, Waits is a force to be reckoned with and a law unto himself, but when you have this amount of talent that's accepted. A maverick, a trend-avoider and always the guy stuck on the barstool in the corner, muttering to himself, laughed at until he sits at the piano and starts reeling off those sublime melodies, you could use the old cliche Tom Waits for no man, but we all wait to see what he comes up with next. And what he came up with after this was... breathtaking. Rating: 8.0/10 __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018