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| Track List: 1. Ol' '55 2. I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You 3. Virginia Avenue 4. Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards) 5. Midnight Lullaby 6. Martha 7. Rosie 8. Lonely 9. Ice Cream Man 10. Little Trip to Heaven (on the Wings of Your Love) 11. Grapefruit Moon 12. Closing Time Running time: 45 minutes Released: 1973 |
[Geordie accent]Day three in the Big Brother House[/Geordie]... or the third successive day I get a post done, anyway.
Going back in time to before I was born, to old, old Waits material, not much of which is immediately familiar to me by name, though Waits is Waits. I expect these to rattle through; 12 tracks in 45 minutes. Short, radio friendly lengths.
The first thing that hits me is that the recording level is quiet. I have to turn the volume up to get a good read on Ol' 55 as it starts. It sounds... more melodic and standard than the Waits material I am closer to. I am, sadly, interrupted even before this first track is done. Another mid-tune pause then.It strikes me on resuming the play that I do recognise the song, or at least it carries one of those "familiar" vibes - you know the type: can't place it exactly, but sure you have heard it several times before. The sort that make you go "Oh, that's what it was" when you find out or remember.
This, then, seems to be Waits before Waits became what he is known for now - all gruff and dark and experimental. Whilst it is no surprise that a younger Tom Waits had a slightly more tuneful voice than the one I became accustomed to from his later work, I am slightly surprised by the melodies being more traditional in form. As I finish typing that sentence we hit the start of Virginia Avenue with its bluesy sway. Oh, yes please. more of this. Perhaps not the best fit for the blue skies outside but a glorious sound and mood all the same. I had been starting to feel more human again, but a bad night's sleep last night has set me back a bit on that score so the low tempo and laid back rhythm induce a yawn - of genuine sleepiness not boredom.
I suppose I might have been really harsh on this in another time. Words like "generic" and "ten-a-penny" and other such epithets for common forms of easily accessible music may have spewed from my fingers or my mouth. I find myself shying away from such vitriol these days; whilst I am as averse to mass-manufactured music as ever, I am more chilled about it just not being for me. With respect to these Waits tunes though... well, I don't have tonnes of stuff like this as my library doesn't skew towards 70s easy listening. The combination of the performer's magnetism, the scarcity of such tracks in my collection and my belated recognition that accessible or popular doesn't have to be bad... well, I can just sit back and enjoy it for what it is. On that score, I don't think it is a patch on, say, Alice (my personal high water mark for Waits, as I am sure I have said before) but it is a nice collection of songs all the same.
The last paragraph reads like a sum-up, but I am only half way through, and finding my ear drawn to the piano on Martha. It doesn't sound completely in tune... it has an echoey, off-note quality to it that reminds me of the piano tunes played in saloon scenes in westerns. A particular affectation of American playing, it seems to me, whether a style affected by the pianist of a deliberate tuning I cannot tell, but I don't associate this kind of "swimming pool" sound to any European artistes. The two tracks named after women seem to merge together in my consciousness, though the twangy-ness of the piano is definitely toned down on Rosie, and it is only the slow, appropriately lonely sounds of Lonely that snap me out of a haze.
Here Waits sounds distant, and with only the piano keys for company he creates an impression of himself on a big stage in an empty auditorium, a sole spotlight on him, a shred of sound just about carrying to the exit that you watch from as he plays, slumped over the keyboard in despair. Say what you want about Tom Waits, his ability to conjure images in the mind of this listener is pretty much second-to-none. We are through that charade and onto an unexpectedly jaunty track, that only gets jauntier as it gets past the intro, doubling down on the jaunt? I like that, and find my foot tapping its appreciation, too. What a contrast from track to track. Out-back mercy-killing in the middle of nowhere to life and soul of a happening party in the blink of an eye.
I really like how this album shifts around tonally. Bluesy for the most part, there are jazzier numbers and plainer "entertainer" faire too. The mix means that none of them get too much - and you don't end up lamenting that Waits is not really a bluesman, or a jazz cat or whatever, but his own thing altogether which takes in aspects of each. On this collection I find myself most drawn to the slowest, lowest tracks, even when Grapefruit Moon has Waits' voice at its wobbliest. The laments, that's what hit me, regret dripping from every note. As Sinatra once sang: regrets, I've had a few (that's a tag I didn't expect to be using).
The title track, Closing Time, is an instrumental, sad and listless - it doesn't hit the moody notes of Grapefruit Moon or despondency of Lonely but it carries that same kind of regretful air from first note to last, and it seems a fitting way to close a disc.
Going back in time to before I was born, to old, old Waits material, not much of which is immediately familiar to me by name, though Waits is Waits. I expect these to rattle through; 12 tracks in 45 minutes. Short, radio friendly lengths.
The first thing that hits me is that the recording level is quiet. I have to turn the volume up to get a good read on Ol' 55 as it starts. It sounds... more melodic and standard than the Waits material I am closer to. I am, sadly, interrupted even before this first track is done. Another mid-tune pause then.It strikes me on resuming the play that I do recognise the song, or at least it carries one of those "familiar" vibes - you know the type: can't place it exactly, but sure you have heard it several times before. The sort that make you go "Oh, that's what it was" when you find out or remember.
This, then, seems to be Waits before Waits became what he is known for now - all gruff and dark and experimental. Whilst it is no surprise that a younger Tom Waits had a slightly more tuneful voice than the one I became accustomed to from his later work, I am slightly surprised by the melodies being more traditional in form. As I finish typing that sentence we hit the start of Virginia Avenue with its bluesy sway. Oh, yes please. more of this. Perhaps not the best fit for the blue skies outside but a glorious sound and mood all the same. I had been starting to feel more human again, but a bad night's sleep last night has set me back a bit on that score so the low tempo and laid back rhythm induce a yawn - of genuine sleepiness not boredom.
I suppose I might have been really harsh on this in another time. Words like "generic" and "ten-a-penny" and other such epithets for common forms of easily accessible music may have spewed from my fingers or my mouth. I find myself shying away from such vitriol these days; whilst I am as averse to mass-manufactured music as ever, I am more chilled about it just not being for me. With respect to these Waits tunes though... well, I don't have tonnes of stuff like this as my library doesn't skew towards 70s easy listening. The combination of the performer's magnetism, the scarcity of such tracks in my collection and my belated recognition that accessible or popular doesn't have to be bad... well, I can just sit back and enjoy it for what it is. On that score, I don't think it is a patch on, say, Alice (my personal high water mark for Waits, as I am sure I have said before) but it is a nice collection of songs all the same.
The last paragraph reads like a sum-up, but I am only half way through, and finding my ear drawn to the piano on Martha. It doesn't sound completely in tune... it has an echoey, off-note quality to it that reminds me of the piano tunes played in saloon scenes in westerns. A particular affectation of American playing, it seems to me, whether a style affected by the pianist of a deliberate tuning I cannot tell, but I don't associate this kind of "swimming pool" sound to any European artistes. The two tracks named after women seem to merge together in my consciousness, though the twangy-ness of the piano is definitely toned down on Rosie, and it is only the slow, appropriately lonely sounds of Lonely that snap me out of a haze.
Here Waits sounds distant, and with only the piano keys for company he creates an impression of himself on a big stage in an empty auditorium, a sole spotlight on him, a shred of sound just about carrying to the exit that you watch from as he plays, slumped over the keyboard in despair. Say what you want about Tom Waits, his ability to conjure images in the mind of this listener is pretty much second-to-none. We are through that charade and onto an unexpectedly jaunty track, that only gets jauntier as it gets past the intro, doubling down on the jaunt? I like that, and find my foot tapping its appreciation, too. What a contrast from track to track. Out-back mercy-killing in the middle of nowhere to life and soul of a happening party in the blink of an eye.
I really like how this album shifts around tonally. Bluesy for the most part, there are jazzier numbers and plainer "entertainer" faire too. The mix means that none of them get too much - and you don't end up lamenting that Waits is not really a bluesman, or a jazz cat or whatever, but his own thing altogether which takes in aspects of each. On this collection I find myself most drawn to the slowest, lowest tracks, even when Grapefruit Moon has Waits' voice at its wobbliest. The laments, that's what hit me, regret dripping from every note. As Sinatra once sang: regrets, I've had a few (that's a tag I didn't expect to be using).
The title track, Closing Time, is an instrumental, sad and listless - it doesn't hit the moody notes of Grapefruit Moon or despondency of Lonely but it carries that same kind of regretful air from first note to last, and it seems a fitting way to close a disc.
