A few months ago, when the second season of Orange Is The New Black came out, I found Tom Waits via “Come On Up To The House” which is featured in OITNB S2E9.
I picked out the “pretty” songs from that album (Mule Variations), and bought those, leaving the grungy experimental ones behind. I needed to edge into Tom Waits gently, you know?
So now I am listening to Rain Dogs and freaking loving it. While some of the songs are still too weird for me to digest, none of them are too weird for me to listen to.
So tell me… where do I go next? Are there other albums with “pretty,” more approachable songs like those on Mule Variations?
Nighthawks at the Diner is very approachable. It’s packed with good songs, great writing, and the music is mostly jazzy in a straightahead way but it’s not boring. It’s coffeehouse style. And he’s very funny during and between songs. In places he’s about this close to being a standup comic. You get rewarded if you listen closely to the words but musically it goes down easy. He didn’t start doing the experimental stuff until later in his career- I think with Swordfishtrombones. And I like the experimental stuff too, but it works best in small doses because his voice is so abrasive. (I find Anywhere I Lay My Head almost unlistenable.) We had a troll here a long time ago who described Waits’ more outre stuff as “scary hobo banging on trash cans,” and even though I like some of that stuff I thought that was hilarious and pretty accurate.
Swordfishtrombones does also have some of his most lovely songs…“Johnsburg, Illinois”, a love letter to his wife…“Town With No Cheer”, an elegy for an abandoned outback train station…and “In the Neighborhood”.
I love a lot of the other songs on that album- Time, Singapore, Tango 'Til They’re Sore, Jockey Full of Bourbon. So much great writing there. But for whatever reason the combination of delicate music and overwrought performance on that song doesn’t work for me. I think I’ll give Rain Dogs another listen tomorrow.
Small Change, Blue Valentine and Heartattack and Vine are all from 1976 to 1980, and are all pretty much straightforward, unexperimental bluesy jazz. Step Right Up, Christmas Card From a Hooker In Minneapolis and On The Nickel are probably my favourites from each album, but there is so much to choose from with him. What’s He Building? might just be my all time favourite Tom Waits song, and it’s pretty out there.
The one good thing about Tom Waits[sup]1[/sup] is that his vocal range is low enough that I can sing along (which I enjoy[sup]2[/sup]) without having to strangle myself with my own vocal cords.
[sup]1[/sup] Other than his superb melodies, lyrics and arrangements, that is.
[sup]2[/sup] No one else in earshot does, but I do.
Check out his album Alice, or at the very least, the title track. It’s Tom Waits at his most achingly beautiful – allmusic has a really evocative description of it.
(It was also written as a soundtrack for a play about Lewis Carroll’s obsession with Alice Liddell.)
This thread got me thinking, so I just ordered Small Change and Blue Valentine on vinyl.
I’m trying to decide on the proper drink to christen these with.
My fav’s although obvious are , I hope I don’t fall in love with you, Ol’ 55 & for laughs, BIG IN JAPAN also there’s one dad I can’t remember the name but the chorus goes cookin’ up a phillipeeno (sp) box spring hog
