There is a tradition when it comes to veteran artists to read into their original work as though the seeds and sensibilities of later work lay there, even when there is nothing to be found. Many a scholar from Shakespeare to Hitchcock can be guilty of this, can find it hard to accept that sometimes people just change, be that from age, experience or just different artistic sensibilities. I make mention this when it comes to Closing Time – Tom Wait’s 1st album foray – because how decidedly not Tom Waits it is. I mean, of course it is Tom Waits, the sincere sensibilities and truthful personality inside would not suggest anything else, but Rain Dogs and Blood Money were not some working future glimmers in the man’s eye when he was making his first jazz/folk record.
The first thing you notice that is so different is that voice. It’s so clean. It doesn’t sound like a thorax put in a rusty steel box and left out in the rain. It’s as clear throated as the trumpets, with both the clarity in tone and vision. Where future records sound like a circus of villains and miscreants, Closing Time is set in small nightclubs filled with normally broken people.
Yet, Closing Time is still great. If it expresses anything about Waits throughout his whole career is a penchant for great, expressive lyrics full of stark imagery and character moments. Hell, the first song “Ol’ 55” is Springsteenian in its descriptions of a car drive, with the colloquial “lickety-splitly” lending a personal and therefore intimate quality to both this song and everything that comes after it.
Lots of these evoke a simple folk feel, but only two are straight up folk guitar songs. The first is “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You,” a sarcastically humorous line that permeates the melancholy of the song and situation, both which gives that similar feeling to Joel Barish’s proclamation of “Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?” from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The second of these two tracks is “Old Shoes,” with a Wild-Horses-like guitar tone and lines about a broken relationship. The latter might be the more generic, but at least it’s sincere and well told.
In between these two tracks are some of the album’s jazzier tunes. First is “Viginia Avenue,” one of my favourites, with some fantastic trumpet work from Delbert Bennett and lyrics that create a specific feeling of the town he is in (I’ve seen all the highlights, I’ve been walking all around/ I won’t make a fuss, I’ll take a Greyhound bus, carry me away from here). “Midnight Lullaby” also has a similar bluesy quality – thus explaining why they are not together on the album – and ends with a rendition of “Hush Little Baby,” which one of those creative choices that should really work, but does.
Then comes “Martha,” which in a not unpopular opinion is my joint-favourite song from the album (the other one later). Not just content wise, a story of nostalgia and unrequited love between at least one party member of two after they’ve moved on with their live (like “Disco 2000”) but also musically with tempo and rhythm changes, backings from both voices and strings and probably the catchiest chorus on the album. Whilst “Martha” is an exemplary Jazz/Folk number, “Rosie” leans close to an almost country feel. Be that the guitar tone or containing some of the more country-ish lyrics (“a lazy old tomcat on a midnight spree”), it gives the song a different feel to many of the festivities.
In more studies of contrast, the next two songs are the saddest followed by the most upbeats tracks on Closing Time. With just one piano and many iterations of its title, “Lonely” is not one of my standouts but is one of the best at educing the exact emotion it wants from its listeners. The same is true of “Ice Cream Man,” though for much different reasons. It’s essentially the rock and roll track of the album, with the central image of an Ice Cream man in love with innuendos to match being delightfully silly (“I got a cherry popsicle right on time/ A big stick, mamma, that’ll blow your mind”). It does sound “out of place” compared to other tracks, but earns it place by being so gosh darn fun.
“Little Trip to Heaven” returns to a jazzier format with the albums most descriptive lyrics of heights and stars. A description such as “banana moon” is as image inducing and unique as a folk artist who described a “Pink Moon”. And speaking of moons, “Grapefruit Moon” also fits this unique vivid quality and is my other joint-favourite song off the album. The chromatic falls, the beautiful strings, lines like “Now I’m smoking cigarettes and I strive for purity/And I slip just like the stars into obscurity,” all add up to what production wise the best off the whole album, and at the very least my favourite song off the album lyrically.
No room for lyrics on the album’s title track, a title also mentioned on “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You.” A jazz instrumental, “Closing Time” contains yet more great and moody trumpet work from Delbert Bennet, and a great sounding bass that keeps things flowing to its beauty filled climax
Tom Waits would go on to make some stranger, more experimental music, but even at the start of his career Tom Waits showed how he could create a mood better than almost everyone else. Content wise it’s akin to A Straight Story or The Killing, in that it proves a stranger talent also has the capabilities to do something great from the “traditional.” But then again, Tom Waits has proven he is his own tradition.
What did you think of the album, though?
Tom Waits Album Rankings
- Closing Time