Arguing With A Hipster About Tom Waits - Page 2

I explain this to Hipster Rick, and he disagrees. He would, after all, he works in a head shop and has flippy girl hair.

"Waits’ albums are like paintings, and each song blends together to form another aspect of that painting."

We’re discussing Small Change, a crucial album in the spectrum of my Waits timeline (January 2006, broke as usual, living with a pervert in Brooklyn) but I disagree with his interpretation. The songs that flow together work towards the larger picture, that is, the portrait of a disenchanted and lonely individual seeking solice in whiskey, strippers and strangers, but just as the painting is starting to form, (“Tom Traubert’s Blues” is one of the purest Waits songs in existence) “Step Right Up” jars the listener out of the painting. It’s a wonderful song, but it’s random both melodically and lyrically — cool as hell, but random. The album settles back into “Jitterbug Boy,” “I Wish I was in New Orleans” and “The Piano Has Been Drinking” before another razz-ma-tazz spike-heel paced number, “Pasties and a G-String,” this one fitting a little better than “Step Right Up” in terms of lyric material, but still jarring the listening from the scope. The pieces that do work as a painting blend together too much, forming a murky soundtrack in gray and brown, without much to discern between them.

I point out The Heart of Saturday Night as a better illustration of the painting theory. Hipster Rick disagrees. He does not like The Heart of Saturday Night. Musically, however, it fits his argument. Each song on that album blends into the next, not in a monotonous, unending way (as on Coldplay’s Parachutes) but rather each as a gentle brushstroke, illuminating the world Waits wants us to see-all night diners, truck drivers, weary girlfriends and sympathetic bartenders.

“I used to listen to your music and think “Boy, I’d love to lie nearly dead in the street with that guy” — Jon Stewart on Tom Waits, 11/28/06

Waits lost much of his charm in expanding the definition of music. The smirking, down-and-out master of metaphors (among my favorites, “It’s colder than a ticket-taker’s smile at the Ivar theater on a Saturday night” from Nighthawks at the Diner) We loved him when he was a little drunk, sheepish, his voice raspy but not the stuff of nightmares. Now his music is much darker, twisted growling ramblings, like a carnival barker from hell. And it works—sometimes. “Underground” (Swordfishtrombones) is an outstandingly cool, shivery-weird song that also gets bonus points because it was used in the Ewan McGregor movie Robots, which I saw with my boyfriend, therefore creating a scene of unparalleled happiness. Too much of that, however, and aspirin is needed. It’s music, yes, but so are little kids smashing wooden blocks together and neither are pleasant to listen to.

Article Author: Retro Music Chick

Award-winning author and music columnist currently writing for st8ke.com. A New York State ranked soprano in my previous life, I no longer sing but take other people's music very seriously. I think in song lyrics and have an uncanny (and probably …

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