Trollheart

Many of Waits's albums would follow themes, though only one to my knowledge is an actual concept album, and his second one certainly does bring together songs that are linked with a common thread, this being travelling, movement, comings and goings, hellos and farewells. It's a much higher tempo, upbeat affair in general than “Closing time” is, and it shows him stretching his musical muscles as his songwriting develops beyond the mostly lovelorn ballads of the debut.

The heart of Saturday night --- 1974 (Asylum)

This album would also mark the beginning of a relationship that would flourish throughout most of Waits's career, that of his friendship with producer Bones Howe, who would helm almost all of his albums from here on in. Right away we're presented with a louder, rougher, more rowdy Waits than has been present on the debut. The man who peeked through slightly in “Ice cream man” now comes strutting to the fore as we open on “New coat of paint”, with an exuberant piano and a rolling melody, the voice of a man who's ready for a night on the town. ”You wear a dress” he tells his lady, ”I'll wear a tie/ We'll laugh at that old bloodshot moon/ In that burgundy sky.” Much of the introspection of “Closing time” is left behind now as Waits puts on his best duds and steps out on the town with his best lady, smirking ”Fishin' for a good time/ Starts with throwin' in your line.” If this was anyone else, you might say that he'd learned the lessons from the mostly positive reception of his debut, but its low sales, and had decided to give people something to dance to, or tap their fingers to, a more commecial Waits. But then, this is Tom Waits, and he don't give a shit what you think or who you are. Perhaps underlining this, the next track is a slow moody ballad, as “San Diego serenade”, later covered by Nanci Griffith, returns us to the style of the debut. Again piano led, it features a beautiful string section accompaniment that really lifts the song to another level, and you can hear the regret in his voice as he sings ”Never saw your heart/ Till someone tried to steal it away/ Never saw your tears/ Till they rolled down your face.”

And then we're off again with “Semi suite” (another word play which would become his trademark) as he drawls the tale of a truck driver on the road, and the woman he leaves behind to wait for him. Strongly driven by smoky trumpet and bass, this song trips along in a very mid-paced jazz/blues vein, the sort of song you could definitely see Waits playing in a smoke-choked bar as patrons ignore him and glasses clink amid conversation. Some fine piano as ever sprinkled through the tune, and really effective double bass from Jim Hughart adds to the small-town-jazz-club-after-hours feel of the song. Although written from the perspective of the woman, the song could be taken as an anthem for truckers, as Waits sings ”He's a truck driving man/ Stoppin' when he can.”

One of the standouts for me is next, another ballad as Waits leaves everything behind in “Shiver me timbers” to go to sea, possibly inspired by his time spent with the Coastguard. Soft violin accompanies him as he moans ”The fog's liftin'/ Sand's shiftin'/ And I'm driftin' on by” and there's a lovely midsection on acoustic guitar. Following this beautiful creation we have a swinging blues tune in “Diamonds on my windshield”, pulled along by a wonderful double bass and some skittering percussion, Waits almost performing a rap of sorts, very jazzy. The rhythm of the vocal really comes into its own when he sings ”Eights goes east/ fives goes north/ Merging nexus, back and forth”. It's a short song, an ode to driving home in the rain, an example of the sort of minimalist song he would come back to time and again, one of them being nothing more than percussion.

A simple acoustic guitar then ushers in the first of two semi-title tracks. ”(Looking for) The heart of Saturday night” trips along nicely in a laconic manner, folky and acoustic and very catchy. Double bass again plays a prominent part in this song, then we kick the tempo back up for the first time since the opener with “Fumblin' with the blues”, an upbeat bopper with a lot of jazz and swing in it. The piano comes back into its own here, and some fine saxophone adds its voice, as does electric piano. It's a song that's kind of hard to sit still to, and Waits's voice is on fine form here. He perhaps begins to look at his drinking habit here as he admits ”I'm a pool-shootin' shimmy shyster/ Shakin' my head/ When I should be livin' clean instead.” Taking the tempo down then for “Please call me baby”, a lovely little bluesy piano tune as Waits tries to win back his lover after an agrument, and frames his desire in a blatant lie about being concerned about her health: I don't want you catchin'/ Your death of cold/ Out walkin' in the rain” but defends his actions rather pathetically and self-deprecatingly when he sings ”If I exorcise my devils/ My angels may leave too.” Lovely strings section employed here too.

From this on it's pretty much slow material and moodier pieces as we head into “Depot, depot” riding on a thick trumpet line and some smoky sax, and a repeat in the lyric of a line from “Virginia Avenue” as he asks ”Now, tell me, what a poor boy to do?” while “Drunk on the moon” (is it coincidence, I wonder, that his previous album also had a song about the moon as the second-last track?) continues this loose theme, as ”Some Bonneville is screamin'/ Its way wilder down the street” and Waits realises ”I've hocked all my yesterdays/ Don't try to change my tune.” Great sax solo here from Tom Scott which ushers in a total change of rhythm as the double bass takes the tune and ramps up the tempo, swinging and strutting along till the piano brings it all back down to earth for the concluding section. We end then on the other song with the title in it, “The ghosts of Saturday night”, with an almost narrated vocal backed by rippling piano, kind of an outro to the album, or an epilogue. Here Waits uses a device he would return to, time and again, waitresses and restaurants as he speaks of a woman with ”Maxwell House eyes/ With marmalade thighs /And scrambled yellow hair” and of eating ”Hash browns, hash browns/ You know I can't be late.” The music is almost incidental, a soft backing for his recounting of the late night folks and what they do when we're all in bed, the ghosts of Saturday night.

TRACKLISTING

1. New coat of paint
2. San Diego serenade
3. Semi suite
4. Shiver me timbers
5. Diamonds on my windshield
6. (Looking for) The heart of Saturday night
7. Fumblin' with the blues
8. Depot, depot
9. Please call me baby
10. Drunk on the moon
11. The ghosts of Saturday night (After hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)

You can definitely see the effect his drinking was having on Waits's songwriting here. While it's improving in leaps and bounds from the songs on his debut, it's also more concerned with characters who weave from one dark alley to the next in search of an after-hours drinking hole or club they can stagger into. The problems of relationships are explored too and an abiding love for cars and driving, and here too Waits expands on his respect for and love of jazz and blues, dialling back the folky influences and dropping much of the Country feel too.

Allover, it's a much more accomplished and well-rounded album, and points the way to the one which would bring him to international notice, though that is yet one album away. The things he sings of are not esoteric: they are the visceral and raw, real and relatable, and they pull us into his dark, murky world, showing us what life is like on the bad side of town. This would continue to be the path he would tread throughout his next few albums, always showing us the darker side of life, shining his torch like some spectral nightwatchman and often throwing up darker and more scary shadows than we could ever possibly imagine. There is, however, great tenderness to be found in his songs too, and this would occasionally leak through perhaps despite his best efforts to remain gritty and hard-bitten.

But if you had decided to take that trip through the dark halls of humanity with him, you had better be prepared, because the journey had just begun.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

So what do you do when you've had two pretty much whimpers of albums, that never bothered the charts and hardly spread your fame far and wide? Well, if you're Waits you record a double live album, in a studio, and use nothing off the previous two albums! Conceived as very much a jazz record that would capture the atmosphere of small jazz and beat clubs, Waits's third effort would feature entirely new material, plus one cover version, inviting a studio audience into a space where tables and drinks were set up, and encouraging background chatter and noise. It wouldn't win him any commercial plaudits, but it would be different and unique enough to secure him a place in the book 1001 albums you must hear before you die.

And in this case, take it from me, you must.

Nighthawks at the Diner --- 1975 (Asylum)

If there's one thing this incredible album demonstrates it's how much of a showman Waits is. Not only did he write all this new material and perform it almost without rehearsal (he wrote nothing down, making it a challenge for his band to learn it), but he sprinkles the music with amusing and clever anecdotes and introductions, many of which are almost as good as listening to the songs themselves. An invited audience to what became a sell-out show having first been warmed up by a performance by a stripper, Waits and the band take the stage, and give us an “Emotional weather report”.

Before that though, there's the opening intro, as the band keeps time behind him, Waits welcoming everyone to “Raphael's Silver Cloud Lounge”, although it is in fact The Record Plant Studios in LA. This seems to be the first real instance of what would become his classic drunken drawl, as he slightly slurs his words (though you can make out every one perfectly; this is just an act, a stage persona --- isn't it?) as he goes on to tell us “I'm so goddamn horny the crack of dawn better watch out!” and how “You're gone three months and you come home, everything in your refrigerator's a science project!” When the song begins, it's pretty much a continuation of his opening monologue, as he slips in references to local spots, and sings (or really, speaks in rhythm) about ”Tornado warnings in effect before noon Sunday/ For the areas including/ The western region of my mental health/ And the northern portion of my ability/ To deal rationally with my /Disconcerted precarious emotional situation.”

Some very jazzy music underpins this, upright bass, trumpets and sax, and that sort of ticking percussion that you hear in these sort of clubs, the drummer seeming more to just be keeping time than actually playing. I guess it would be termed a jazz jam, maybe? It's more a slow blues intro then to “On a foggy night”, with another entertaining scene-setting by Waits as he takes us on “an improvisational adventure into the bowels of the metropolitan region.” There's not too much point in my recounting what he says here; you really need to hear this to get the proper atmosphere, and in fairness much if not all of it is very America-specific and quite dated in some cases --- stuff about saving coupons off an “Old Gold”? The song then wanders along on a slow, lazy blues/jazz line as Waits meanders through the tune, slipping into monologue and then back to singing as he goes.

A hilarious resume of his eating experiences in local restaurants introduces the next song, as he drawls, to enormous and knowing applause, “I've had strange looking patty melts at Norms, I've had dangerous veal cutlets at The Copper Penny. I ordered my veal cutlet, Christ it walked off the plate and down to the end of the counter, tried to beat the shit out of my cup of coffee! Coffee just wasn't strong enough to defend itself!” The song then contains the title of the album as “Eggs and sausage (in a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)" slides in from his monologue, the restaurant theme developing through the song. Another slow, bluesy style song with his easygoing vocal and some fine work on the piano too. Another standout then comes in “Better off without a wife”, as he introduces it by saying it's “for anyone who's ever whistled this song (plays “The Wedding March”) then grins as he admits “Well maybe ya whistle it but ya lost the sheet music.” He then goes on to describe his ideal date: with himself. Hilarious.

The song is wonderful though. ”Sleepin' till the crack o' noon/ Been out howlin' at the moon/ Goin' out when I want to/ And comin' home when I please/ Don't have to ask permission/ If I wanna go out fishin'/ Never have to ask for the keys.” It rides along on a slow bouncy sort of honky-tonk rhythm on the piano as Waits croaks out the advantages to being single. This before he met Kathleen I assume. The first song on the album not to have an introduction, and the original intended title for the album, “Nighthawk postcards (from Easy Street)” opens on a sliding walking bass line before Waits comes in with the vocal, something he calls himself an “inebriational travelogue”, the song again not so much sung as spoken, the images evoked of a city at night seen through the eyes of a drunk, as he says “You been drinking cleaning products all night, open to suggestions.” It's by far the longest track on the whole album, at eleven and a half minutes as he weaves his way through the nighttime streets, watching the denizens of the city as they scurry to and fro. Some great sax work again and a hypnotic bassline accompanies him as the song speeds up and slows down, Waits singing/talking about sailors, movie-goers and used car salesmen as he swaggers on down the rainsoaked avenues, “Using parking meters as walking sticks” and the band kicks into a bit of a boogie as he goes on his way.

It's the sort of song that seems so directionless and abstract and improvisational that it could conceivably go on forever, or at least until Waits loses his voice, but it ends well and leads into another anecdote which flows into “Warm beer and cold women”, where Waits returns to the Country influences he explored on his debut album. It's a nice swaying ballad driven by piano as he sings about ”Platinum blondes and tobacco brunettes”, Pete Christlieb ripping off a fine sax solo, then “Putnam County” is another sort of improvisational trip through ... Christ I don't know. It's all very on-the-fly, seat-of-your-pants songwriting. But it's exceptionally entertaining. Into a blues shuffle then for “Spare parts (a nocturnal emission)" as Waits sets the scene: ”The dawn cracked hard like a pool cue/ And it weren't takin' no lip/ From the night before.” It's a finger-clickin', toe-tappin', hand-clappin' infectious beat and sax and bass drive it alone in a sort of a slowed-down “Diamonds on my windshield” feel.

“Nobody” is an old-style Waits ballad with his hard-bitten twist on it, almost completely piano driven, and it's the shortest of the tracks on the album, bar the intros: just under three minutes. It leads into the only cover version, Tommy Faile's “Big Joe and Phantom 309”, with a short --- very short --- intro from Waits who declares “It's story time again!” Quite funny when he declares “Gonna tell ya a story about a truck driver” and one guy --- one guy --- claps, hoping to start something off no doubt, but there are no takers. Hate that. Anyway, the song is credited to as I say Tommy Faile but Waits incorrectly says that it was Red Sovine that wrote it. Some quick research reveals that it was Sovine who had the hit all right, but it's Faile's song. Anyway it's the usual ghost-from-the-past-appears-to-help-stranger stories, set in a trucking concept. Cute, but a little predictable. It's for once not a piano song, but ticks along on some really nice acoustic guitar.

We end then on the outro, “Spare parts II” as Waits thanks everyone for coming: “Woulda been strange if nobody had shown up!” There's the introduction of the band --- perhaps odd, given that this is the end of the gig as it were, but then Waits always has been a maverick and does things his own way. And so comes to an end a pretty unique album, a singular experience and a hell of a hard album to review and get across to you all; I envy the lucky few who got to actually participate in this. Must have been a blast, and talk about immortality!

TRACKLISTING

1. Opening intro
2. Emotional weather report
3. Intro
4. On a foggy night
5. Intro
6. Eggs and sausage (in a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)
7. Intro
8. Better off without a wife
9. Nighthawk postcards (from Easy Street)
10. Intro
11. Warm beer and cold women
12. Intro
13. Putnam County
14. Spare Parts I (A nocturnal emission)
15. Nobody
16. Intro
17. Big Joe and Phantom 309
18. Spare Parts II and Closing

I never got to see Waits live (though I did give my brother a ticket to go when he couldn't afford it) but from the sounds of this album he must be one of the greatest entertainers to see onstage. His presence just radiates from the album and commands your attention. It's something that I again have to remark on, even though I've already said it, but to actually record a live album with completely new material is something I know of no other artiste attempting. To think he had, at this point, a loyal enough fanbase that they would buy this album and listen to all-new tracks in a live setting is really something special. Basically, it's like a new studio double album. But live. If you know what I mean.

If this hadn't cemented his position as a bona fide star, then the album that followed it would, though again the charts would know little of it and radio would always ignore him. No hit singles for Tom Waits, but then, that was not the world he inhabited.

And on balance, I think I prefer to live in his world.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

If one album set out to slay the beast that his rampant alcholism had become, it was his fourth album, third studio, “Small change”, released in 1976. Waits has said of that time, “I was beginning to think there was something amusing and wonderfully American about being a drunk. This was me saying cut that shit out.”

Featuring some songs which would go on to become standards of his, and turning out to be one of his most favoured albums, “Small change” upped the ante for Waits, and was the point at which he began experimenting with sounds, moving away from the usual instruments and arrangements, like the doleful title track, which is backed solo by a saxophone, or the irreverent “Pasties and a g-string”, which has nothing in it but percussion. It also features the classic hilarious “The piano has been drinking (not me)” and "Step right up”, which has Waits hawking wares like a barker on a street corner accompanied by nothing else but bass and trumpet.

I have already reviewed the album, so I won't be rewriting it (I'm not that much of a masochist!) but you can find it here http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ml#post1076242

Which 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 --- Asylum

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 guy 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 ti 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.

TRACKLISTING

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.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Although really none of Waits's albums would ever be considered a proper commercial breakthrough, would never yield him that big hit single or that track that took him into the households of the world and made him known to all, he has quietly over the years insinuated himself into a position almost of music god. So many musicians quote, cite, cover or are influenced by him that it's tempting to think that he was around forever. But though mainstream success eluded him --- I don't really think he bothered courting it, to be honest --- his albums over a period from 1976 to 1987 just got better and better, and this is what I would consider his golden period. That's not to say that albums following that were poor, but as he stretched out in new directions and tried new things, albums like Bone machine, The black rider, Alice and Blood money just seemed to lack something, be a little less accessible. This, however, remains one of his crowning achievements for me. But then, so does the next. And the next...

Blue Valentine --- 1978 --- Asylum

One thing you always got from Waits, at least around this time, was pure frank honesty on the cover of his albums. He didn't go for showy, glitzy or abstract album covers: it was usually just a picture of him, but the picture almost always portrayed a particular aspect of him, or referenced the state of mind or body he was in at the time. “Closing time” shows him leaning against a piano, alone, perhaps a little daunted on his first outing but still with a confident swagger and a gleam in his eye, while on the cover of “Small change” he's addressing his rampant alcoholism and destructive lifestyle, looking away as if to say “What the fuck am I doing here?” On the front of this album we find him in reflective mood, perhaps thinking about lost lovers, his career or his attempts to stop drinking before it killed him. You can almost see into his heart, which is appropriate given the title, and there's a world-weariness and almost a sense of resignation in his nearly-closed eyes; you can nearly hear him sighing.

But if you thought the album was going to be a contractual obligation, by-the-numbers effort that he really wasn't interested in, then you really don't know Tom Waits. The album contains some of his most cynical songs alongside some of his most beautiful ballads, and is almost a marriage of Heaven and Hell as he goes once again searching through the alleyways of society after dark, poking through the refuse to reveal the human detritus, the spent men and fallen women, the whores and the drunks and the barkers and the con-men, and telling their stories.

Proving once again that you must expect the unexpected with Waits, the album opens on a cover of the famous “Somewhere” from the musical West Side Story, Waits giving it his own special ragged touch as he growls his way through the love ballad, supported by the return of Bob Alcivar's sumptuous orchestra. It's completely out of left-field, something he has never done before and something I don't think he ever repeated, and it sets the tone for the album. Almost like "Thunder Road" o n Bruce's Born to run, it's the only optimistic song on the album, which then descends into a litany of hooker, pimps, eloping kids and spree killers as, if you like, Waits leaves the movie theatre and shuffles back out onto the hard cold streets of reality, turning his collar up against the rain, back in the world he knows.

The song is followed by “Red shoes by the drugstore”, which rides on a boppy, upbeat percussion with sort of sprinkled guitar flying through it, almost like a tribal dance or something. Typical again of Waits, there's no real structure to the song, no verse/chorus/verse; it just sort of runs as an almost stream-of-consciousness lyric yet with a definite form. Having eschewed guitar completely from his previous album Waits perhaps overcompensates this time out, bringing in three more apart from himself, giving the album a fuller sound.

One of his alltime classics is up next, the heartbreaking ballad “Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis”, as a woman writes to her ex-lover to tell him how well her life is working out these days. ”Stopped taking dope/ Quit drinking whiskey/ My old man plays the trombone/ Works out at the track.” It's a solo performance by Waits on the piano, a slow, bluesy melody, but in the end the woman comes clean: ”Charlie, for God's sake/ You wanna know the truth of it?/ Don't have no husband/ He don't play the trombone/ Need to borrow money...” It also contains one of my favourite lines written by Waits: ”Everyone I used to know/ Is either dead or in prison.”

I feel the jazz elements are lessened here too, as he proceeds into a straighter blues rock direction, particularly on the next two tracks, starting with “Romeo is bleeding”, with a certain latin swing to it and a feel of, again, the gangs from West Side Story with finger clicking and congas, the vocal a low hiss, almost as if Waits is afraid to be heard, maybe hiding from the gangs. Some great organ on this for which we owe thanks to Charles Kynard, as Waits tells the story of the gang leader who listens to the police sirens but ”just laughs, cos all the racket in the world/ Ain't gonna save that copper's ass/ He ain't never gonna see another summer/ For cuttin' down my brother/ And leavin' him like a dog behind that car without his knife.”. Romeo has been shot but doesn't seem to care, or even notice, hard as nails and probably realising he's dying but glad that he has extracted retribution for his brother.

For the second time Waits records a song over eight minutes, and it's a belter as he really sinks his teeth into the blues for “29$”, another of my favourites on this album. With Kynard again at the helm and Waits himself in fine form on the piano, featuring some stupendously righteous blues guitar the song again follows a broken-down resident of the night city as he tells her ”Little black girl/ You shoulda never left home/ There's probably someone that's/ Still waiting up for you.” and true to his fears the girl is hustled, robbed and ends up in hospital where the doctor shakes his head and groans ”Lucky to be alive/ Only lost half a pint of blood/ Twenty-nine dollars/ And an alligator purse.” Some truly superb blues playing here makes the song seem nowhere as long as it is, and you could listen to it for twice the length. It's a great cautionary tale, again jumping back to “Burma-shave” and showing that the grass is not always greener, that sometimes it's better to stay at home where you're safe.

You might think after a powerhouse performance like that, the aqlbum would begin to dip a little in quality, and to be fair, this might be the case with lesser artistes, but Waits has his foot on the throttle here and he ain't braking for no red light! There are five songs to come and each is as good as, if not better than the other. “Wrong side of the road” takes as its protagonist a couple eloping, with a blues shuffle and again exquisite organ work from Charles Kynard as the man encourages the woman to come with him against her parent's wishes, to run away with him to Reno. It's a slow blues meander as he snarls ”Tell your momma and your poppa/ They can kiss your ass/ Poison all the water/ In the wishing well.” This guy also does not have the Christmas spirit in his heart, as he sneers "Strangle all the Christmas carollers/ Scratch out all their prayers/ Tie 'em up with barbed wire/ And push 'em down the stairs.”

As he convinces her to leave her house and head off with him his intentions take on a much darker tone when he promises "With my double-barrelled shotgun/ And a whole box of shells/ We'll celebrate the Fourth of July/ We'll do a hundred miles an hour/ Spendin' someone else's dough/ Drive all the way to Reno/ On the wrong side of the road.” The tempo kicks up then for the infectious “Whistlin' past the graveyard” in which Waits lays the urban legend down that he was ”Born in a taxi cab”. There's a bit more of the jazz about this one, with trumpets and saxes taking the tune and bouncing it along like Waits as he goes ”Whistlin' past the graveyard/ Steppin' on no crack.” The next song again I've written extensively on, so let me just say that “Kentucky Avenue” is a piano ballad that seems at first to be a story of two kids making plans for their day, until right at the end you realise one is handicapped, as Waits sings, in one of his most emotional vocals, ”Take the spokes from your wheelchair/ And a magpie's wing/ I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad/ Cut the braces off your legs.” It's a song that always makes me cry, and I don't care who knows it. A fragile, viciously beautiful and bitter, heart-smashing ballad that nobody else but Waits could write. The orchestra coming in at the revelation in the lyric just increases the pathos and tragedy of the song. My eyes are wet even now, and that's how it should be with a song such as this.

Then we're in the seedy hotels that he has frequented no doubt on more than one occasion for “A sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun”, somewhat of a return to the rhythm of “Romeo is bleeding”, and with Waits again plundering childhood tunes as he opens with ”It's raining, it's pouring” and later ”Old man is snoring/ Now I lay me down to sleep/ Hear the sirens in the street/ All my dreams are made of chrome/ Have no way to get back home/ And I'd rather die before I wake/ Like Marilyn Monroe.” The guitars play a great part in this, as does the sax, and it just oozes trashy sexuality and questionable morals as it slinks along the alleyways. At its heart, it's a song that looks back to “29$” and describes the plight of the many thousands of young girls who leave home looking for fame, to be discovered, and end up peddling their bodies, the only thing left that they can sell, on the hard city streets.

The title track closes the album, and it's another bitter ballad, with the addition of an “s” to the end, making it “Blue Valentines”, as the album cover becomes the song, Waits recalling the cards he gets from his ex-lover in Philly "To mark the anniversary/ Of someone that I used to be/ And it feels like there's/ A warrant out for my arrest.” Reflective guitar carries the song almost on its own, no percussion, no sax, no piano, a true triumph, an indication of what can be done with just one instrument. Okay, it's probably a few guitars, but nothing else that I can hear. The song also references his drinking days and what it has done to him as he moans "It takes a whole lot of whiskey/ To make these nightmares go away/ And I cut my bleedin' heart out every night.”

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

At this point, I feel there just was no stopping Waits. Having created a masterpiece like “Blue Valentine” you would have forgiven him for taking a rest, but no: it only took two more years before he would release yet another incredible album. If nothing else though, this showed his refusal to be categorised, boxed up, restricted. On “Small change” he had gone in all directions, making it impossible both to pin him down and to know or be able to guess where he would jump next. For “Foreign Affairs” he went all film-noir and bluesy, and now he was throwing blues and jazz together and adding in some other elements, but continuing to talk and tell the stories of the dispossessed, the pathetic, the drunk and the abused, and to send some half-drunk warnings to those who wanted or wished to join the dark world, tread the grey, unforgiving streets he walked.

If you want to make it out here, you had better man (or woman) up and grow yourself a real thick hide, cos this ain't no place for the weak. You'll be chewed up and spat out by the system, and the only way to avoid that is to do some chewin' and spittin' yourself. You wanna take a walk on the wild side, you better have the bus fare, cos this wagon ain't stoppin' any time soon, and once you're on board you're there for the long haul.

So look into my eyes, kid, he says, chewing down on a cigar and knocking back a whiskey, his bloodshot eyes trying to make out which of the two of you he's taking to, and tell me you got what it takes to make it on these mean streets, And if not, then stay at home with your parents and your college degree and your dog and your summer job, cos you wouldn't last pissin' time. It's not nice out here.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

”Probably see someone you know on Heartattack and Vine" croaks Waits in the title track, and perhaps you can. Maybe they're one of those ”Pedal pushers suckin' on a soda pop" or the woman being left sleeping as her lover steals away in “Ruby's arms”, or maybe even the guy who warns “If I can find a book of matches/ I'm gonna burn this hotel down” in “Mr. Siegal". For this album Waits created another cast of characters, all stumbling through their lives and trying to do the best they can, while grabbing what little happiness or shelter they could on the way. It was two years later, and four years into the Waits golden era, when he came up with this gem, which would lead to his songs being covered by a real icon and also to a protracted legal battle over the use of one of them. It was also the year he would part company with his longtime record label.

Heartattack and Vine --- 1980 (Asylum)

One thing --- one of the many things --- I love about this album is the cover. From the start, Waits has always been on the album sleeve. Sometimes looking a little the worse for wear, but here he's in a hell of a state. On one of the monologues on Nighthawks at the Diner, Waits growls that someone once commented “Christ Waits, you look so raggedy!” And here he does. He actually looks like he has been pulled through the proverbial bush backwards. Even though he's wearing a tuxedo, it looks as if someone dressed him when he was asleep or drunk or both, and he woke up, took one look at his reflection and said “What the hell am I doing in this monkey suit?”

But the picture aside, the sleeve is very clever as I have already mentioned when I featured this, way back when, as one of the “Secret life of the album cover” slots. It's presented like a newspaper, with the titles of some of the songs showing as the headlines, and underneath each are snippets of the lyrics to those songs, written like clippings with a reference to the city in which the song is set. Really innovative, and you can spend some time reading the cover and getting a whole lot more out of it than you would have expected. But that's the cover. What about the music on the disc inside?

We open on the title track, and somehow there's a kind of honking guitar, which takes the first two bars of the song in before the vocal begins. Waits sings in a somewhat scratchier, and slightly higher register voice than he has up to now, though this album would see him try out several new vocal techniques and show just how versatile that sandpaper larynx was. He continues the kind of travelogue lyric he displayed on some of the songs on Nighthawks as he takes a trip down Hollywood and Vine, renamed for the song, and points out the various characters --- ”See that little Jersey girl with the see-through top?” and ”Doctor, lawyer, beggarman, thief” --- yes, all of human life is again on display in all its fragility and vulnerability.

The song mostly continues on the same chords, apart from the bridge, where it changes very slightly --- well, it could be a chorus: hard to say with Waits, as he seldom sticks to any musical rules and often makes his own up. It's a hard-rockin' tune though, probably the most in-your-face we've heard since, well, ever. It's almost a total change of style, from the breezy devil-may-care attitude of “Romeo is bleeding” or the maniacal killing spree in “Wrong side of the road”. You can just see him with his hands in his pockets, (at this stage he was getting his drinking under control, so let's assume his character has managed to kick the bottle too) strolling down the street, stopping under a lamppost to adjust his hat and light up a cigarette, grin at some girl across the road and saunter on.

This is, to my knowledge (I'd have to check back but I think I'm right) the first time Waits has mentioned or brought God into his songs (other than exclamations like “Christ!” of course), and when he does it's not as a bible-thumper --- you'd never have expected that anyway --- but with a sly wink and a dry joke at his expense. ”Don't you know there ain't no devil?” he grins. ”That's just God when he's drunk!” Love that line. This is the song that led to that lawsuit I spoke of in the introduction. Levi's used a cover of this by “Screamin'” Jay Hawkins, who had given them permission to, but Waits was not so sanguine about the idea. Someone who does not like his music being used to sell products, Waits took a case against Levis and won. Since then you won't find his music in any advertisements.

Some great trumpet in this too, adds to the sort of raw feel of it as Waits snarls ”This stuff'll probably kill ya/ Let's do another line.” It's followed by an instrumental which could have come off The heart of Saturday night, as “In shades” envisions him in a club where nobody is really listening to him, and he's playing background music against which people have their conversations and drink their drinks. There's some great Hammond organ from Ronnie Barron and some fine, laidback guitar too. I like the idea he's gone for, where you hear, in between the bars, people talking and glasses clinking, and when the song ends there's the barest smattering of applause. Clever too, how they applaud when the song hits a false ending. Very jazzy, and it leads into the first of four ballads, which I think may be the most he's had on any one album to this point.

“Saving all my love for you” is driven by Bob Alcivar's beautiful orchestral work again, the man having become something of a permanent fixture on Waits albums since he wrote the music for “Potter's Field” on Foreign affairs. Pealing churchbells pull the tune in then are absorbed very cleverly into the actual melody as Waits's piano takes over. He sings of an early morning when "No-one in this town/ Is makin' any noise/ But the dogs, and the milkmen and me.” It's back to his familiar rough drawl as he admits ”I'd come home/ But I'm afraid that you won't/ Take me back.” The song also contains one of my alltime favourite Waits lines (this album has three, one of which I've already mentioned) when he sings ”I'll probably get arrested/ When I'm in my grave.” Did a line ever encompass a man's reputation so perfectly before?

It's a beautiful ballad, relatively short, and then the tempo picks up a little on the organ-driven “Downtown” which kicks its heels along with a sort of sullen pleasure, dragging its feet and shaking its head. Some good boogie guitar joins the organ and the whole thing has a swagger about it, then the next one is one of perhaps his most famous, having been covered by Springsteen. With a simple acoustic guitar and bass, “Jersey girl” is an uncomplicated song of young love, as Waits declares ”Nothing else matters in/ This whole wide world/ When you're in love/ With a Jersey girl.” Some lovely orchestral strings swelling up through the chorus here too. Wonderful song.

And from a heartfelt love song we're on the other side of the coin as Waits sneers ”Baby I'll stay with you/ Till the money runs out” launching into the song with lowdown dirty delight as he sings ”Bye bye baby/ Baby bye bye!” Again the organ plays a prominent part in this mid-paced rocker, though so too does the bass from Larry Taylor. If anyone knows what “on the nickel” means, please let me know. I think it refers to social welfare? Anyway, it's the title of the next track, another beautiful ballad, which just shows how Waits can swing from cynical user to concerned observer, as with the backing of Alcivar's lush strings again he opens with another nursery rhyme snippet --- ”Stick and stones/ Will break my bones” --- and sings a lullaby to his child. Piano threads through the song, as does more folk rhymes --- ”Better bring a bucket/ There's a hole in the pail/ If you don't get my letters/ You'll know that I'm in jail.”

Even with this tender ballad under his belt, the best is yet to come in the closer. Waits drops his register even lower for the second part of the song, which gives it a rougher, rawer feel, then he switches from high to low as the song progresses. More nursery rhymes corrupted as he sings ”Ring around the roses/ Sleeping in the rain”. Then he warns ”The world just keep on getting bigger/ Once you get out on your own.” It's hard to choose a standout, as so many of the songs could qualify, but “Mr. Siegal” does contain another of my favourite lines, when he growls "How do the angels get to sleep/ When the devil leaves/ The porchlight on?” It's another bluesy, rocky tune with a scratchy vocal from Waits, scratchy guitar and warbling organ, moving the song along in a mid-paced swaying rhythm. With the references to casinos and the title presumably nodding to the famous gangster who built Las Vegas, it seems to be a song about a guy losing his shirt and trying to make it out of the city. Waits even tips his battered hat to The King when he sings ”One for the money/ Two for the show/ Three to get ready/ Now go man go!”

He has in fact saved the best for last. One more heartsqueezing ballad before we're out, and it's one of his best. “Ruby's arms” is the story of a man leaving his sleeping lover and stealing away in the early hours of the morning. As if he's spent himself with the rest of the album, Waits's voice is low and soft here (or perhaps he doesn't want to wake Ruby) and almost breaking with emotion as he tries to tear himself from her --- ”The only thing I'm taking is/ The scarf off of your clothesline” --- his piano and the orchestra combining beautifully to end the album on the very gentlest of closers, and prove once again that Waits can turn his hand to anything: he can make you cry, laugh, shock and scare you, open your eyes to a pitiless, unforgiving world or draw you into a secret, safe place where you can hide for a while. A true artist who has never compromised his art, and hopefully never will.

TRACKLISTING

1. Heartattack and Vine
2. In shades
3. Saving all my love for you
4. Downtown
5. Jersey girl
6. Till the money runs out
7. On the nickel
8. Mr. Siegal
9. Ruby's arms

Like “Foreign Affairs”, this album has a mere nine tracks, though just about every one is gold. The previous album had ten, but from this on in Waits's albums would be much longer, culminating in the triple box set “Orphans: Bawlers, Brawlers and Bastards” which would feature no less than fifty-six new tracks. That's not till 2006 though, and there are eleven more albums to go before we reach that, the next one being his first full movie soundtrack and a collaboration with a Country music superstar and legend.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

While normally I would tend not to include movie soundtracks in discographies, this time there are a few reasons for breaking that rule. First off, you're usually talking about an instrumental-only affair, with possibly music from other artistes on it. Second, the music is usually not all written by the artiste in question and has little relevance to their own collection. None of these apply to the next album. Waits wrote all the songs and music for it, and not only that, it was while recording this album that he was to meet the love of his life, future wife and songwriting partner, Kathleen Brennan. Add to that the fact that he collaborates with Crystal Gayle on some of the tracks (she is solo on some, but even then he's writing the music and lyrics) and you really have an album you can't overlook.

So I won't.

“One from the heart” original soundtrack --- 1982

Written for a movie that's far less sublime than its music is, “One from the heart” (the movie) is a massive disappointment, the more surprising when you consider that the great Francis Ford Coppola himself directs it. But at its heart (hah!) it's an awkward story of the love between two people and the trials they go through. Having loved this album, and wanting to hear how it translated within the movie, I watched it and was left with a feeling of an hour and a half wasted: the movie was formulaic drivel basically, but the music: ah, that's something else entirely. Step this way, my friend.

There's a typical Waits piano line opening the album, kind of reminds me of “I never talk to strangers”, then Waits's voice is low and hoarse, counterpointed by the clear tones of Crystal Gayle, and they duet beautifully on the last line, before the brass section takes the song, following some nice strings conducted by the almost by now permanent fixture Bob Alcivar, as we move into a sleazy blues tune with jazz overtones for the second part of the introduction, “The wages of love”, Waits and Gayle again duetting. Lyrically it's a dark song as Gayle sings "Firmly believe love was designed/ To exploit and deceive” and it moves slowly along with sax and trumpet and soft percussion, into the first solo song from Crystal Gayle.

It's only a short one, just over two minutes, but it's a beautiful ode to love lost as she sings “Is there any way out of this dream?” with Waits on the piano, her soulful voice lighting up the composition. Although Waits does not sing on this you can hear his songwriting genius in lines like ”Let's take a hammer to it/ There's no glamour in it” and ”Summer is dragging its feet/ I feel so incomplete.” There's also some a lovely tenor sax solo taking the song into its conclusion. Then Gayle remains behind the mike but is joined by Waits for a classic as he argues the benefits of his lifestyle and she snaps at his untidiness in “Picking up after you”. Waits at his most sleazy is brilliant in this, as he groans ”Looks like you spent the night in a trench” and she sneers back ”The roses are dead/ And the violets are too.”

It's a slow, jazzy number with blues overtones, driven on sprinkly piano and trumpet, the two singers doing a great job communicating the idea of a couple really sick of the worst side of each other, and ready to split up. Gayle then takes the next song solo, for the slow, moody “Old boyfriends”, with a country lilt and again piano backed, electric piano I think or maybe celeste, not sure. You can almost hear the cracks appearing in her heart as she sings ”They look you up/ When they're in town/ To see if they can / Still burn you down” while there's some lovely reflective electric guitar sliding in and out of the tune too. But the album's highlight comes next, and it's Waits in his best “Blue Valentines” mood, in fact this song could have been on that album. “Broken bicycles” draws a great but not obvious parallel between a lover and a bicycle rusting in a garden yard. ”Broken bicycles” sings Waits, ”Old busted chains/ Rusted handlebars out in the rain/ Somebody must have an orphanage for/ These things that nobody wants anymore.” Superb.

The song is driven on an almost classical piano line, slow and evocative with Waits's vocal soft and close to muttered, a great sadness hanging around it as he sighs ”Summer is gone/ But my love will remain/ Like old broken bicycles/ Out in the rain.” An absolutely beautiful song, a masterpiece both of unexpected imagery and heart-wrenching emotion, and definitely the highlight of this album for me. Also the point at which, rather unfortunately, it begins for me to dip.

“I beg your pardon” is another piano ballad, based I feel something along the lines of “Cinny's waltz” with a certain cinematic feel to it, Alcivar's strings really adding another layer to it as Waits sings ”You are the landscape of my dreams” but it's when “Little Boy Blue” begins that I start to lose a little interest and from here on it's much lower par than it should have been. I have nothing but good things to say about the first half of the album, but with a few exceptions it's hard to find much complimentary to say about the closing half. I guess you could make the case that the first half is the “old “ Tom Waits we heard on albums like Closing time, Foreign affairs and Blue Valentine, whereas what surfaces on the second half is a little more experimental, a bit more avant-garde jazz, the kind of ideas he would bring into his next proper album.

He met Kathleen during the recording of this album, but I don't know if she helped him or gave him any ideas on it, but if so then you could possibly attribute the sudden change here to her influence. With a bouncy, finger-clickin' bass line that harks a little back to “Romeo is bleeding”, “Little Boy Blue” is driven on hard-edged organ from Ronnie Barron, with Waits's vocal again low-key, the sort of song a man sings with his collar turned up and with his hat down over his eyes. His penchant for plundering nursery rhyme really comes into its own here as he sings ”Little Boy Blue/ Come blow your horn/ Dish ran away with the spoon” and later sings of Bo Peep and other childhood favourites. The song ends on a rather frenetic organ solo and piles into “Instrumental montage (The Tango/Circus girl)” with the first part being, not surprisingly given the title, a tango on the piano with some wild saxophone being added by the returning Gene Cipriano, a soft little piano run then taking it into a carnival waltz which would later resurface on Frank's Wild Years, five years later.

“You can't unring a bell” is backed by some pretty amazing thunderous percussion and some spooky guitar, with Waits often speaking the lyric like a monologue, while Crystal Gayle returns to accompany him on what is essentially the title track . I feel the melody on “This one's from the heart” sails very close to that from “Picking up after you”, and perhaps that's intentional, as it's the reconciliation song which mirrors the trouble in that song, or at least the hope that it can be sorted out. Gayle is wonderful on this, and it's not hard to see why she is regarded as one of Country's first ladies. I'm not sure what the link is or how they came to be working together, but it's a pity this was the only time they did, as they really are one hell of a team. Perhaps Kathleen put her foot down after they were married?

Like much on this album, it's a slow, romantic, moody ballad, and it's followed by another, the last vocal track, which oddly enough, but given the conclusion of the film, is sung by Gayle solo as she forgives her lover and asks to be reunited with him in “Take me home”. It's a short song, just over a minute and a half, and with a very simple lyric: ”Take me home/ You silly boy/ Cos I'm still in love/ With you.” We end then on a glockenspiel instrumental as “Presents” revisits the melody of the previous song, a mere minute of music but quite effective. Interesting point for you trivia fans: it's played by Joe Porcaro, father of Toto brothers Jeff, Mike and Steve. Nice low-key ending, though with all respect to Joe, I'm not entirely sure how essential it was to run the same melody twice.

TRACKLISTING

1. Opening montage (Tom's piano intro/Once upon a town/The wages of love)
2. Is there any way out of this dream?
3. Picking up after you
4. Old boyfriends
5. Broken bicycles
6. I beg your pardon
7. Instrumental montage (The Tango/Circus girl)
8. Little Boy Blue
9. You can't unring a bell
10. This one's from the heart
11. Take me home
12. Presents

As film soundtracks go, this is one of the best I've heard that has been all composed by the one musician, and which is not all instrumental. It's hard to capture the feel of a movie like this, and even though “One from the heart” is, as I recall, a very basic and boring movie with a predictable ending, perhaps that's a good reason for Waits to have scored it. Not that it's predictable, but that it deals at its heart with human relationships and the darker side of emotions, and shows that the world is not a fairytale. There are songs here which deserve to go down as Waits classics, and you don't often say that about film soundtracks, or I don't anyway.

In addition, being the backdrop for that fateful meeting with the woman he would eventually marry and who would become his muse for, well, the rest of his life, this album holds a special place in the discography of Tom Waits. It may not be perfect, and it may be the soundtrack to a film I would advise nobody to watch, but it truly does in fact live up to its name. It's also a great chance to see Waits duet, which happens so rarely, and sure if you're a fan of Crystal Gayle (and who isn't) then there's something for you here too.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

If you thought, at this point, that you knew and had a fairly decent handle on the music of Tom Waits, well what happened next should have shown you the danger of adding up immature roosters before they have broken out of the shell. Although the next album Waits would release had some recognisable influences yet from his previous body of work, this is pretty much where he entered the studio more as a scientist than a musician, if you like. That's a very bad analogy, but what I mean is that from here on in Waits experimented more with his music. He started trying out odd rhythms, strange singing patterns, weird lyrics and brought in instruments he had previously never used, like shaker, African talking drum, bagpipes and glass harmonica. In short, it was a total seachange for the man, and must have taken his fans by surprise when it originally hit.

The album also marks the end of a long partnership, as Waits decided to dispense with the services of producer Bones Howe, taking the controls of the mixing desk and sitting in the director's chair himself, solidifying his grip over his music. This is the first album he self-produced, and once he got the hang of and the taste for it, there was no going back. Although he had by this time met Kathleen Brennan, and her tastes would inform much of his music from here on in, she has no actual input into this album and only co-wrote one song on the next one. Waits had, and has, always been a man to jealously guard the creation of his music, treating it like his baby, as he would later reveal on the collection of unused songs released on triple CD in 2006. But here is where you can see the effects of Captain Beefheart (apparently) to whose music Brennan introduced him, and which obviously impacted upon him strongly.

Swordfishtrombones --- 1983

It had been three years since Waits had been in the studio to record his own music, and it certainly shows, in a fresh, powerful, often disturbing and also beautiful collection of songs that run the gamut from zany to heartbreakingly sad. As if making a conscious decision to be “less mainstream”, although Waits wouldn't know the mainstream if he fell into it and drowned, the album kicks off with “Underground”, a stomping, swaggering almost muted sound which sounds like trombone or tuba but seems like it may be a bass marimba. Whatever, it's not only the music that is weirdly out of the ordinary here: Waits growls the vocal with a kind of almost barking cadence, cutting off the ends of sentences sharply, like someone saying “I – told – you – once...” The song itself seems to be about maybe the city after dark, as he sings ”They're alive, they're awake/ While the rest of the world is asleep” and may refer back to the many unfortunate and pathetic characters who people albums such as “The heart of Saturday night” and “Small change”. It may not; it's a strange song.

Things get weirder then with “Shore leave”, percussion provided by Waits hitting a chair off the floor, seriously, and a strange kind of moaning, screeching sound with timpani and other odd instruments meshing with guitar, marimba and trombone, much of the vocal spoken sotto-voce by Waits. It details the exploits of a sailor, far from home, as he tries to fill up the time before he has to go back to his ship. The chorus is the only sung part, in a sort of hoarse whisper. ii]I was pacing myself[/i] he says [/i]”Tryin' to make it all last/ Tryin' to squeeze all the life/ Out of a lousy two day pass.”[/i] It's followed by an instrumental as Waits gets behind the Hammond and racks out a spooky, chilling carnival-like tune that goes by the name of “Dave the butcher”, then, being Waits, he changes tack completely with one of his soft aching ballads as he pays tribute to the town in which Kathleen was born, “Johnsburg, Illinois.”

It's a pained, emotional vocal which has him almost hoarse with quiet passion, and accompanied only by piano, which he plays himself, and bass. It's a very short song, only a minute and a half, but the amount of love that's poured into its run is truly exceptional. The basic melody would later be revisited in part on another song further along on the album. Then, as if to say BOO! He launches into “Sixteen shells from a thirty-ought-six”, with heavy, choppy electric guitar and thumping percussion, the vocal raw and ragged, the song structure virtually nonexistent, just verse following verse. There's a great beat to it though, lots of percussion and bells. One thing that doesn't, and probably never will change in Waits's music though is the characters who populate it, and they're all here, from the shore leavetaking sailor to the gin-soaked boy in the song of the same name and the dead soldier in “Soldier's things”, not to mention Frank making a pre-appearance before the album which would bear his name in “Frank's wild years”. Up next though is a slow, morose ballad driven on piano with a strained, almost defeated vocal in “Town with no cheer”. This is also the first time Waits uses bagpipes, through they're only used in the short intro.

This album also marks the end of the “short” Waits albums, as I think I mentioned previously. With fifteen tracks, this is a far cry from any of his older albums, most of which had seven or eight tracks. This is a format he would continue throughout his career; whether it was just that he was writing more and wanted to use more, or he wanted to give better value to his fans, or even that he didn't even realise he was doing it, from this on in Waits albums would always give great bang for buck, few less than twelve tracks in length. There's a bit of a return to the old form for “In the neighborhood”, a song of claustrophobia and hopelessness, a feeling of being trapped in a one-horse town (a theme Waits used quite a lot). The tone is doleful, almost funeral as he utilises a lot of trombone and slow percussion, baritone horn and organ.

Another instrumental in “Just another sucker on the vine”, which he plays almost entirely solo on the harmonium, with some assistance from trumpet and then we're into “Frank's wild years”, which I have written about already. Carried on the somewhat madcap organ of Ronnie Barron, it features Waits basically talking the lyric, almost in a bored monotone as he tells the story of Frank who, fed up with his life, burns his house to the ground and heads off for a new life. This would, as I've intimated, lead to a whole album based on a play Waits would write with Kathleen. It, and all the succeeding tracks, are short, some less than three minutes long, and the next one up is the title, with just the “s” removed. “Swordfishtrombone” runs on a marimba and conga rhythm, with nothing else but bass supporting the tune, while the much shorter “Down, down, down” has the full band, and is a faster, more frenetic affair with a jazzy, syncopated beat and Waits returning to the somewhat harsher vocal of “Sixteen shells”.

After that we slow everything down for another piano ballad, and again I've featured “Soldier's things” in detail before, so I'll just say it's the gut-wrenching aftermath of a funeral, as the soldier's widow (we assume) tries to make some cash by selling off his personal effects. It's totally heartbreaking, and if you want to read more about it check here http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ml#post1206215. It has, as I mentioned above, something of the melody of "Johnsburg, Illinois", in it. That leaves us with three tracks to go, all short, and “Gin soaked boy” comes a little towards the idea of “Sixteen shells” again with a hard grinding guitar and thumping percussion, another growled vocal with a lot of power in it, while “Trouble's braids” recalls the basic rhythm of “Red shoes by the drugstore” with another muttered vocal and virtually no instruments bar drums and bass. We end then on one more instrumental, with no less than four glass harmonicas as “Rainbirds” ends a pretty stunning album.

TRACKLISTING

1. Underground
2. Shore leave
3. Dave the butcher
4. Johnsburg, Illinois
5. Sixteen shells from a thirty-ought-six
6. Town with no cheer
7. In the neighborhood
8. Just another sucker on the vine
9. Frank's wild years
10. Swordfishtrombone
11. Down, down, down
12. Soldier's things
13. Gin soaked boy
14. Trouble's braids
15. Rainbirds

The variety on this album is pretty staggering, even given the sort of thing Waits had given us up to now. This is a man almost reborn, stretching his musical muscles and testing the limits of his talent and creativity. There aren't too many other artistes who would get away with some of the tracks here and not lose some of their fans, or at least cause some puzzled looks. But at this point we've kind of learned to expect the unexpected with Tom Waits, and this is just the beginning. Next time out he would venture further into the unknown, like a man on a spacewalk who suddenly considers letting go and just floating into the vast mystery of space, taking us all with him.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Frownland

You know what caused the new and sudden change in Waits' style?

...His wife introduced him to Captain Beefheart.

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Trollheart

As I noted in the intro to "Swordfishtrombones"...

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

YorkeDaddy

Most of Waits' pre-Swordfishtrombones albums are a little boring for me so I've been waiting in anciticpation for you to get up to this point!

Swordfishtrombones is amazing but the entire experience for me to this day is still hurt by the existence of Dave the Butcher...a track that almost makes me feel ill just listening to it. There's something about it that I absolutely despise...it sucks that the rest of the album is so great but I have no choice but to skip a track. I just don't know why he made that song

__________________
http://cloudcover1.bandcamp.com/
http://daydreamsociety.bandcamp.com/

9-Time Winner of MusicBanter's "Most Qualified to be a Moderator" Award