Tom Waits

Many people first heard Waits through the balmy Eagles rendition of "Ol' 55," which dominated charts a year after the original's release on Waits' 1973 debut-- a most unsuitable introduction imaginable considering his exigent career. Amongst the cocktail-hour woes of Closing Time, Waits flaunts his range with the country shanty "Old Shoes" and the bouncy swing of "Ice Cream Man," but heartbreakers like "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You" and "Martha" evidence his career-long knack for writing evocative ballads.

Singer/songwriter/pianist Tom Waits is more than a chip off the Randy Newman block.
Though he sounds like a boozier, earthier version of same and delights in rummaging
through the attics of nostalgia, the persona that emerges from this remarkable debut album
is Waits' own, at once sardonic, vulnerable and emotionally charged. His voice is
self-mocking, bordering on self-pity, and most of his songs could be described a... More >

Waits has been around--one of the two songs that make this album is about driving home at dawn in a '55 Chevy, the other about contacting a girlfriend of forty years before. With his jazz-schooled piano and drawling delivery, he resembles Randy Newman more than such fellow inmates as Jackson Browne and David Blue--Newman feigns feelings for the purpose of mocking them, while Waits exploits an honest sentimentality which he undercuts just enough to be credible. He doesn't carry a tune as well as Newman, though, which gets to be an annoyance on side two. (Grade - B+)