Between the morose masterpiece of Small Change and some of the funkiest, rockiest and best tunes Waits’ wrote in Heartattack and Vine (more on that soon), Waits’ made a record that I think seems one of the more overlooked collections in his varied and wonderful discography. That album is Blue Valentine, one that first exemplifies some real instrument experimentation from Waits whilst still maintaining the core “Asylum” sound, at least in the fact that the core instrument in many of these songs are guitar. That would probably suggest some more swagger emulating from the Gravelled One, and whilst that is certainly there, so is the vulnerability that the album cover Waits crouching in the corner would also indicate.
Perhaps a crucial, unspoken vulnerability is that he chooses to open this album with the words of another artists. People talk about this cover of West Side Story’s “Somewhere” as a “send up” (such as Robert Christgau), and whilst I can see the humour in how barking Tom Waits does really hit the long epic notes that this track allows is a somewhat funny contrast, I think it’s more important to see the sincerity behind it. As his previous album indicated, Tom Waits’ was very much enamoured with the Hollywood culture that produced these lush, cinematic pieces. A cover done in jest should still be one that has a tangible connection to that track; Sid Vicious may have slurred his way through “My Way,” but he certainly appreciated and loved the bravado a Frank Sinatra song lets you have. Hell, Alien Ant Farm’s version of “Smooth Criminal” conveys a love for a singer that at a time as a culture it was very much uncool to like (This is also why Limp Biskit’s cover of “Faith” can suck a cyanide tailpipe). Sorry for that tangent: back to Waits’.
Next comes “Red Shoes by the Drugstore,” in which the contrast between the orchestral “Somewhere” and the guitar and keyboard led second track shows the former’s other intention in being the opening track. The muted rhythm and bright fills create an atmospheric vision of this robbery situation that’s central image also brings to mind a snese of fantasy (like Kate Bush’s previously mentioned album The Red Shoes also did). “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis,” as well as being one hell of a title, is a Bukowskian style tale of debauch life in which the contrast between the female words and the male of gruff of Waits makes for an interesting and memorable contrast. It’s a great narrative, one that only needs a piano and a voice to describe its awkward connections between lonely people. In my opinion, in terms of lyrics, a standout Tom Waits’ track from his entire canon.
“Romeo is Bleeding” returns to a familiar jazz sound for Waits, albeit one that has brought with it electric guitar and organs. A title that inspired a mediocre movie with a great Gary Oldman performance, it is full of violent imagery such as the title and imagery of guns and knives that does make this stand out from the rest of the songs on Blue Valentine. (It also ends with a Jimmy Cagney reference, because Waits is my kind of guy). Next is the eight minute “$29:00,” which has expressive guitar work and cymbals that fill up the sound for the entirety of the track. Despite the great playing, it still does suffer from being a tad too long, although I maybe would have felt different if I was listening to it as the end of the first half as it was originally intended.
Side Two begins with two varying guitar-led jazz tracks. The first, “Wrong Side of the Road,” starts in Gummo territory with putting “a dead cat on the railroad track” before carrying on with a story that we assume to be of people from a lower class. The ugly side of the American Dream accompanied with awesome sorgans. “Whistling Past the Graveyard” is, ironically, a more upbeat yet insane sounding Waits, with a saxophone led verse that is so good it could have carried the whole song, but fortunately Tom more than makes his share with lines like “my eyes have seen the glory/ of the drainin’ of the ditch/ I only come to Baton Rouge/ To find myself a witch.
Waits comes back to his traditional piano track for what is probably another standard of the canon. A seemingly autobiographical account of his childhood, “Kentucky Avenue” is a beautiful piece with powerful orchestral backing and some of Waits’ most powerful lyrics that ride the line between darkness and nostalgia. It somehow makes acts of deviance extremely moving, and the final lines put a church key in your pocket/ we’ll hop that freight train in the hall/ and we’ll slide down the drain all the way/ to New Orleans in the fall” feels both like something the younger and future narrator’s wish to happen.
The final two tracks help to give the whole record a unifying quality similar to Foreign Affair. “A Sweet Little Bullet From A Pretty Blue Gun” closes both the stories of depravity from youth to adulthood throughout Blue Valentine, as well as being a somewhat companion piece to “Red Shoes By the Drugstore”. It has cymbal fills with the light touch of rain, and a creeping like swinging rhythm of which the light playing all helps to convey. But of course the whole record is unified with the title(ish) track, “Blue Valentines,” in which everything breaks down to just Tom and his blues guitar. This is an incredibly intimate piece, in which Tom makes calls for companionship in a manner that shows the desolate miscreant, the lonely criminal, though in this case a much more metaphorical sense. The idea of the “burglar that can break a roses’ neck” and the “tattooed broken promise” are powerful ones, ones which break illusions of permanent declarations of love between two people, that along with the contrast in the title brings everything to an unembellished close. No wonder the Blue Valentine felt it needed to be even more depressing.
Blue Valentine is an often overlooked album that, while it doesn’t reach the kind of instrumental flourishes that would occur after this album, still has enough experimentation to make this a unique piece in the Tom Waits’ oeuvre. Tom Waits was showing his rockier side. His final Asylum Record would push him over that edge.
Tom Waits’ Album Ranking
- Small Change
- Blue Valentine
- Nighthawks at the Diner
- Closing Time
- The Heart of Saturday Night (the more I do the less this album stand’s itself out)
- Foreign Affairs