Closing Time

by

Tom Waits

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I hadn't heard any of Tom Waits' music before I stumbled onto a compilation album ('Used Songs') from his time at Elektra, which was the most astonishing musical discovery for me since I'd found Art Pepper and Miles Davis a few years prior. Still, I did not expect ''Closing Time' to have the same transcendent power Mr. Waits so effortlessly weaves in his later work - my clue was that the only song from his initial album to make it onto the compilation is 'Ol' 55', which hinted to me that it took some time for his abilities to develop. Regardless, I wanted to begin at the beginning, and observe the maturation process - sealed in wax, so to speak. And in that sense, the biggest hurdle the Tom Waits of 'Closing Time' has to overcome is competition with the older, more seasoned version of himself.

Obviously this album is well-liked. It isn't my intention to insult other fans of Mr. Waits' by judging this album by his later efforts, but there is simply not the same feeling to the absorbed, introspective songs on 'Closing Time' as the samples I've heard from 'Small Change' and 'Heartattack and Vine'. The difference is perspective - 'Closing Time' is a collection of lonely ruminations, from the bluesy, Dylanesque 'Old Shoes', to the jazz standard sound of 'Little Trip to Heaven' and 'Midnight Lullaby'. In its entirety, the album sounds like bits of a young man's poetry scratched down and matched up with a base, a horn and a piano - melancholy and benign, if tuneful.

Compared to the tumultuous, relentless, unsparing vignettes he crafted with his later efforts, this album doesn't sound so much innocent as cocooned. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as the saying goes. There are probably many people who would find this album easier to listen to than some of the more abrasive, musically and lyrically challenging songs he came up with later, but to my mind, Tom Waits isn't about being easy, and he certainly isn't about nice, which is what this album is - nice.

Unfair as it may be to compare the early Tom Waits with the new, the simple fact is that if you are considering this album because you enjoyed his later music, it's doubtful you will find the same attitude. You may like this one anyway, and it's true that this album holds up as well as most singer/songwriter efforts from the early seventies, but it's also true that that his best was yet to come.