Mike Natale:Listened to: MP3
It opens with a bluesy gut-punch, with Waits sounding more like Dr. John than the Tom Waits I’d grown to know, the beginning track as jarring as that opening sentence. “New Coat Of Paint” has a bluesy, jazz hall feel, and I had hope that the whole album would continue like this. Unfortunately, only one other track did, “Depot, Depot”. The rest seem to possess a different quality. The seem reminiscent of something, but I just can’t for the life of me place what it is. (This is a joke, as you will be able to tell later.)
It starts on San Deigo Serenade. I thought at first, Ray Charles, but there was something deeper. I realized soon that Waits didn’t have his trademark growl. Rather, he had Bruce Springsteen’s trademark gravely ballad warble. Semi-Suite and Shiver Me Timbers both have that same feel as San Diego Serenade. If you happen to like Bruce Springsteen’s style of balladeering, then this is the album for you. Though you might just wanna look up some Springsteen instead.
Eventually, a break from the pseudo-boss comes in the form of Diamonds On My Windshield (Looking for). Diamonds On My Windshield has a fun bass-line, but the beat-poet vibe gets dull after the first 30 seconds. The title track is once again a Springsteen ballad if Bruce ever decided to become a lounge singer, which is the feeling I keep getting during this album.
Finally, Please Call Me Baby is a track that’s not a Springsteen ballad nor a Dr. John jam. Of course, the violins turn it into what sounds like a demo tape Sinatra got and said “Good song. I can sing it better.” It sounds like Waits went “I really like ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’. I think I should write my own version.” They aren’t identical, but it’s just like you can’t listen to The Weary Kind in Crazy Heart without thinking in the back of your mind “Yeah, look, it’s a good song, but I saw The Wrestler too.”
The only track I find truly unique is the finale, “The Ghosts Of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)”, which is a truly bluesy, grumbly track which is more like the Tom Waits I came into this album expecting. Sure, it has that spoken word style, but unlike Diamonds On My Windshield, there’s no beat-poet backing to beat you over the head.
Look, I really like Tom Waits. Hell, I follow the man on Twitter for fuck’s sake, and while I appreciate Tom trying to make The Heart Of Saturday Night into his answer to In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra (if you don’t think so, just compare the album covers).But I can’t help feeling like a majority of this album sounds like Jungleland, but with all the build-up leading to nothing. Each track I keep praying for that guitar chord that comes in 1:49 into Bruce’s brilliant finale track from Born To Run.
So, look, I liked The Heart Of Saturday Night. It was a fun album, and I’ll probably listen to it again, but it’s not his best. At most, it’s a weak Springsteen album. At least, a throw-away collection of songs Sinatra rejected. I’m glad Waits is on the 500 list, and I will stand by Raindogs, and hell, I probably woulda been cool with this on there, if Rolling Stone hadn’t completely ignored a man who is, in my opinion, the greatest living songwriter.
While Waits above album sounds like many different things, I can’t think of a damn thing that sounds quite like any track on The Songs Of Leonard Cohen. Cohen’s ‘68 debut lacks the drum-machine, synthesized choir sounds of Various Positions, which contains Cohen’s best known song Hallelujah, it is this album that I feel is Cohen’s magnum-opus. Unlike later releases, where Cohen’s voice was strong and commanding, or today, where his voice is weak from age, from the opening track Suzanne, Cohen’s voice is soft and controlled. But it isn’t out of shyness or weakness, no. Throughout the album, his reserved manner makes you lean in, feeling like every song is some secret Cohen’s sharing solely with you. Cohen unlocks a magic in “folk” music Dylan always tried to avoid, and Paul Simon only grazed. Every track on Songs Of Leonard Cohen stands on its own as a masterpiece, and if my opinion means anything, which I’m assuming it does since you’re reading this, if you listen to one album today, I won’t mind if you pick The Songs Of Leonard Cohen over The Heart Of Saturday Night. I always will.
-Mike
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Nick Young:
Listened to: MP3
Tom Waits circa 1974, in the years before he quit drinking (“I must admit I hoisted up six tall cool ones in the back with the stage crew”), was already the wild-eyed alley cat we’ve come to love today. He could command bars full of beer-chugging burn-outs like he was the pied piper of boozy piano players. He could lead the emotionally damaged rats of the world, those who “went out alone, if they went out at all,” to the true heart of Saturday Night. Audiences that enjoyed his frail ballads were likely to be comprised of hopeless romantics who flirted with the edge of the night because no one else would have them. Indeed, they understood what Bowie meant by “it’s the terror of knowing what this world is about” in “Under Pressure”, for they were the ones screaming, “Let me out!” Sure the iconic, craggy voice Waits would later perfect sounds a little premature in the years leading up to “Heart Attack and Vine,” but in the 70’s he could still sing lead soprano in a junkyard choir better than any barfly in the music biz.
His sophomore effort, “Heart of Saturday Night,” is a jazz record that makes the genre label ‘jazz music’ sound like a misnomer. On tracks such as album opener “New Coat of Paint,” Waits takes us into a bleak world full of men and women too broken to even carry broken dreams. If the piano sounds like a carnival to you then you’re clearly not listening to the lyrics- which very well could be describing characters from some lost Antonioni movie:
“All your scribbled love dreams are lost or thrown away,
Here amidst the shuffle of an overflowing day…”
In these lonesome, crowded nightclubs and shoddy restaurants that Tom Waits finds himself in, which you may or may not be one you’re familiar with, the beer is warm and the women are ice cold. Unfortunately for Waits and the sad sappy suckers who join him at the bottom of the world, they’ve been down so long that they don’t believe a better way of life is even possible for them anymore. No matter how often they may pretend that they’re orphans and their memories are like trains, getting smaller as they pull away from each other,* deep down they know that they can’t outrun the past.
They’ve all embraced their fates- even the ones stuck in loveless relationships. On the recorded version of “Semi Suite,” Waits narrates the life of a Semi truck driver’s frustrated, down-and-out wife as though he’s telling her story directly to her. “You’ve packed and unpacked so many times you’ve last track,” he observes with a slow, sympathetic shake of his head. Even so, she’s still not going anywhere. We know this because earlier in the song the chain-smoking Ron Perlman lookalike revealed her tragic weakness. “You’re gonna tell him that he’s your man. You ain’t got the courage to get up and leave.” He should know – it takes a ghost to know one.
*Lyric taken directly from track nine, “Time,” off of “Rain Dogs”. My favorite verse: “And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget.” Think about that while listening to / reading this and consider an idea- if somehow did have the option to erase a haunting memory, would you? I wonder how Tom Waits would respond…
-Nick
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So, thanks for stopping by. Tomorrw, be sure to check out Heaven Up Here by Echo & The Bunnyemen
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