Tom Waits Album Reviews

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Closing Time (1973)
The Heart of Saturday Night (1974)

Closing Time (1973)

8

Ol’ ’55 / I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You / Virginia Avenue / Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards) / Midnight Lullaby / Martha / Rosie / Lonely / Ice Cream Man / Little Trip to Heaven (on the Wings of Your Love) / Grapefruit Moon / Closing Time

Closing Time is probably the friendliest Tom Waits album your money can buy. Although the amount of hard-to-digest albums (The Black Rider, maybe also Bone Machine and Blood Money, if your standard is the Jackson Browne/James Taylor/Elton John-axis) is fairly limited, his ‘70’s output – when he his voice was, like Dylan’s or Randy Newman’s, an acquired taste, and not yet the gruff growl that suggests he’s a relative of Louis Armstrong, Howlin’ Wolf and The Big Bad Wolf on the later albums – is still his mainstream-sounding body of work that incorporates the finest of half a century of American roots music (blues, folk, country, jazz). Something that always comes up when I’m listening to his albums is that they’re all very cohesive and sonically homogenous, even when he mixes accessible ballads and theatrical avant-blues with pots-and-pans-folk, and Closing Time is no different. Even more so, it’s an immensely natural and humble album (certainly when keeping in mind it was a debut) with a nice flow that suggests he must’ve been honing his craft for quite a while (as proven by The Early Years-albums, released nearly two decades after this album). The songwriting, nor the lyrics, are eccentric – in fact, looking back at it from 2004, most of the album’s surprisingly sweet and traditional -, but there’s this closing time-vibe (and it may very well be, like one critic already suggested, the one title that covers its content most adequately) that he’d never again come up with.

Opener “Ol’ ‘55” is immediately a great example of Waits’ piano-based ballads: combining concise Brill Building-pop with hints of country, it’s an ultra-American tale of a man, his car and his fondness of his girlfriend. All very modest and humble, if it weren’t for the fact that Waits somehow turns this unremarkable event into a grander thing by letting his protagonist “lead the parade” while the sun’s coming up, in semi-heroic Walter Mitty-style. Even better is the unadorned “I Hope I Don’t Fall in Love with You,” which for some unknown reason always reminds me of Bob Dylan’s stuff (if the latter had never read a Bible). Set in a bar, it shows a guy trying to avoid falling in love with the girl on the other side of the room, but of course, as she leaves, he realizes that’s just what has happened. Following these romantic mutterings is “Virginia Avenue”, the rambling of the lost drunk trying to find his way home, set to a strutting, stuttering piano and a trumpet with a lazy swagger. It’s in this song and the cool jazz of “Midnight Lullaby,” “Little Trip to Heaven” and “Grapefruit Moon” that the images popping up in your head will match the cover of the album most closely. It’s that of a 2 A.M.-vibe, the hum of the crowd, the smell of cigarettes and an old guy playing jazz standard on a piano with Michelle Pfeiffer (or the classy blonde of your choice) purring on top of it. Of these songs, “Midnight Lullaby” is the most memorable, but also the unapologetically romantic “Little Trip” and the subtle drama of “Grapefruit Moon” are the kind of stuff you might use when you’re trying to make up after a quarrel. Elsewhere, we have Waits framing similar sentiments in other ways: “Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards)” and “Rosie” are country-ish ditties that practically define the word “nice”, while the unsubstantial piano-piece “Lonely,” though certainly not an impressive song, fits perfectly on the album. Saving some of the best for last then: “Ice Cream Man,” the lone up-tempo song, is a delicious slice of swing-pop that’s a nice break from the gently swaying portraits of love and loss and drunkenness, with some funny innuendos thrown in (“Fix you with a drumstick, I’ll do it for free” – yeah right). The album’s highlight though, is “Martha,” a touching ballad of love at old age, about an elderly guy calling his earliest love. You might call it sappy, but I’m just a sucker for that lovely melody, those untainted lyrics and simple memory that speak of a love so unconditional and pure it almost hurts, while the strings bring him once again closer to Newman-territory (but without the venom beneath the surface). The album is closed with the sweeping instrumental title track that once again proves the bare essentials can do the trick. Closing Time isn’t loaded with extraordinary classics, but its sincere sentimentality (that’s how it sounds anyway), consistent mood and humbleness make it particularly difficult to dislike.

The Heart of Saturday Night (1974)

7.5

New Coat of Paint / San Diego Serenade / Semi Suite / Shiver Me Timbers / Diamonds on My Windshield / (Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night / Fumblin’ with the Blues / Please Call Me, Baby / Depot, Depot / Drunk on the Moon / The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone’s Pizza House)

The sophomore effort of the late night song-poet with the prematurely craggy voice basically continues the Jack Daniels-sponsored direction of Closing Time, with the focus shifting from slightly sentimental, innocent ballads to jazz-inflected street poetry. Come to think of it, this change of focus is not that noticeable, as only a handful of songs disrupt the slow pace of a succession of ballads and they’re coincidentally placed at the album’s kernels. Still, this album title also covers the album’s content very well, as Waits once again introduces himself as the Mayor of Nightlife, an experienced know-it-all with a certificate from a Creative Writing-course. Whereas the earlier lyrics were already streamlined and obviously laboured over, here the guy delivers ‘em with the obvious intention of recreating the beatnik-rhythms of the ‘50’s. You’d expect Ferlinghetti or Ginsberg to do a cameo, although that doesn’t happen. Some of the session players are of a pretty stellar calibre, though: not only does cool trumpeter Jack Sheldon appear, but so does West Coast jazz monument Shelly Manne (drums). As a listener you’re in safe hands, while Waits introduces you to a diverse gallery of troubled and/or love-smitten characters ranging from a lonely truck driver’s wife and a sailor preparing himself to part from his loved ones, to his own fictitious self cruising down the streets and having too much alcohol.

“New Coat of Paint” announces itself as the harbinger of this blues-by-way-of-jazz hybrid, while it would’ve sounded equally credible in the hands of Dr. John. The song basically deals with nothing much, but its lazy swagger and rollicking piano parts, as well as smart-ass lines like “Fishin' for a good time starts with throwin'in your line,” are an excellent way to start off an album. Even better is “Fumblin’ with the Blues,” a song that sounds as if it was penned by Randy Newman, not only because of the combination of piano and strings, but also its obvious wink to the Tin Pan Alley-tradition of 50 years earlier (and there’s that clarinet too, of course). And if you’re into alliterations, this is your lucky day, with lines as “I’m a pool-shooting-shimmy-shyster shaking my head, when I should be living clean instead.” The most striking example of his hipper credentials is of course the often-praised “Diamonds on My Windshield,” which has him reciting his nightly itinerary over a backing of simple, muted drumming and a strutting bass line that probably imitates the fickle rhythm of nocturnal life (remember Bernard Herrmann’s Taxi Driver score?). It would’ve been even more stylish if the horns had added the roar of cars engines and their screeching tires on the asphalt (like in Mingus’ “A Foggy Day”), but I bet this thing was already quite unusual for a mainstream songwriter at the time. What you get besides these songs is basically … ballads. Lots of ‘em. That’s not really a problem (if it weren’t for “Ice Cream Man,” Closing Time would’ve been one big-ass ballad), unless these are indistinguishable from each other. This is not the case, as some of them – most notably the lush “San Diego Serenade” and the guitar-based title track – are among the nicest songs he’s ever done, but each time I finish listening this album, I get the feeling that not enough of them are truly memorably, standing out from the pack, transcending the standard confines. I can still enjoy the lovely late-night croon of “Semi Suite” (especially because its classiness is such a contrast with its content – the drag of daily life/marriage), the romantic longing of “Please Call Me, Baby” and “Drunk on the Moon,” with its swinging interlude, but for me, they don’t have the impact of a “Martha” or an “Ol’ ’55.” That said, there’s nothing disappointing either, making The Heart of Saturday Night one hell of a consistent album. It’s just that it lacks the spark that takes his best stuff into the realm of excellence.