Customer Reviews

Closing Time

5 star:		(97)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the album for all those who think they hate Tom Waits. Perhaps his most easily accessible album, Closing Time is a tour-de-force for anyone who's had their heart broken and lived the ensuing days (months, years . . . ) in a bar. The lyrics display Waits' way with words (too many "w's" there, I know) and wedding them (whoops!) together with music that is as perfect a fit as Goethe is to Schubert. Anyone who doesn't get a bit teary at "I hope that I don't fall in love with you" - or "Rosie" must have ice coursing through their veins.

It's 2:00am and that bottle of Jack is paying you back, whispering loneliness. You think back to the girl you once loved - the girl you lost. You know you shouldn't think of her, but it's as if the memory itself is what drives you.

Tom Waits gave us a nice collection of tunes with this album. "Martha" is beautiful. "Lonely" is what it is. It's funny... Mention Tom Waits to most people, and - if they even know who he is - they'll just see him as this Charles Bukowski guy with a hoarse voice. The early Tom Waits gave us some of the most beautiful ballads. He paints a picture that few (Springsteen, Nick Cave are the only ones that come to mind) could ever rival. His work is infused with poetic grace; his is a drunken ode to melancholy.

This album, like "Frank's Wild Years", is a perfect introduction to his music. Check it out...

This great, great album, arguably the best of Waits career, has been in my Top 10 since the day I first heard it. If anything, it has edged higher up my personal chart as the years have gone by.

Once upon a time it was a great late night drinking album, one my friends and I would listen to on cassette while driving from DC to Baltimore and back on a Saturday night. Later, during a phase I'll only mysteriously hint at, because that will give me a cool, artistic aura that drives chicks crazy, it was a late night drinking LP for me and me alone. Still later, it was a great CD to sing along to as I tried to get my newborn son to sleep. He still likes these songs.

There is so much great music here that I won't even waste your time with a track-by-track review. My personal favorites are "Old Shoes(& Picture Postcards" and "Grapefruit Moon," but this is a near-perfect record, from open to close. Anyone who saw Bette Midler's teary version of "Martha" on Saturday Night Live a few generations ago could see the effect Waits songwriting had on his L.A. contemporaries.

By the way, Waits version of "Ol' 55" proves that the Eagles, who covered it on their first LP, could kill even the greatest of tunes.

Having gotten into Waits through his experimental avant-garde albums (Bone Machine was my first taste of him), I was a little disappointed when I heard his 70s era music. It wasn't what I was expecting, nor was it the sort of music I tended to listen to anyway. The combination of blues, jazz with his own unique twist simply didn't quite click for me. However, having not listened to any Waits in quite a long time, I threw on this album on a whim and couldn't believe what I was hearing. How had I dismissed such great music before? Was I mad or deaf or both?

Yes, Closing Time is a truly remarkable album. Soulful, tuneful and driving, it's simply chock full of great, memorable songs. His voice is the most accessible I've heard it. No growling or deep falsetto (if you've heard some of his stranger stuff you know what I mean by that) here, just his unique sounding crooning. While it may not be as off the wall as later material, it's every bit as expressive. The album is largely vocal and piano driven, with drums, guitars, strings and saxophone joining in when appropriate. The overall mood is somewhat somber though some tracks are a little more upbeat (such as Ice Cream Man).

Listening to this album late at night has almost drawn me to tears. It's incredible. If you're looking to get into early era Waits, you have to have it.

I am one of those listeners who don't believe drug abuse and alcoholic behaviors an artist make. Just as I think Billy Holiday and Janis Joplins early recordings when their voice weren't ravaged with drinking are sublime, I think Tom Waits first album is up there as one of his best (if NOT the best).

Closing Time is an amazing album when you consider the time period that it was recorded. It has a different sound to everything else that was going on and a very intimate, un-slick production feel.

His voice, while gravely, is incredibly strong and also sweet-not the raspy "cool" Tom Waits we know today. While not a hugely experimental (by today's standards CDs) album, it has a dark beauty that reminds me of Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake. This is a man who FEELS, people, and yes, is actually terrified to show it!

I first started listening to this CD after a late night shift while it was dark and raining. When the first piano chords came in over the speakers, I knew I was in for something incredibly different. A genuine story teller with a gift for portraying intimate stories in way that becomes humanely universal, the soft horns and fade outs add to this atmospheric album. I honestly felt like I had stumbled onto a chain-smoking failing musician who was playing his demons out onto the piano in a church basement. At times overwhelming and romantically depressing, sometimes I am shocked that Tom Waits is around today.

His other albums are powerful as well, but there is something special about the intimacy and fully-fleshed feel of his first album. I personally suggest you listen to it late at night while looking out of a window into a rainy city block.

Do you remember when you were a child and you played in the rain for the first time? How the water smelled different from your nightly bathwater and the soap your mother used to wash you with? Remember how that earthy rain always seemed to chase away the cold, even when it was hot? And all the strange but wonderful bugs that would come out? THAT is this album. I can smell the beautiful, but very very gone, past, when I listen to this album. There are so few things in this world that make me feel this way. His other albums give other things that hold the same level of intense beauty, but this one is his most direct and pure. "Martha" reminds me that my heart CAN break. And even in breaking there's beauty.I love this music.

Tom Waits' first album sounds completely different than anything else he has done (except The Heart of Saturday Night). The music is jazzier, there is much more of an emphasis on the piano (which is usually very slow and pleasant) and he actually sings. There is almost no gruff to his voice at all, and it is surprising how much different of a sound it gives. The second half of the album is almost all slow sad songs that are almost primarily piano. It gives the feel of closing time for a lowlife kind of guy with nowhere else to go. Surprisingly to me, when I was first getting into to Tom Waits I listened to this album and I didn't like it, luckily I gave it another try recently and found that I was greatly mistaken.
All in all, a new favorite Waits album of mine, with some the most beautiful piano work of his career. A must for any fan.

This work is somewhat unusual for Mr. Waits, and undoubtedly many people will prefer his more raucous and experimental works, but for my money Closing Time is his best album by far. Not a bad song or wrong note on the entire album. Sad, plaintive, sweet, nostalgic, warm, not what you normally associate with Mr. Waits, but the kind of music you can listen to alone when you are depressed and lonely (not that that ever happens to me), or when you are with someone and you feel like something quiet and mellow.

In the hopeless love ballad "I Hope that I don't Fall in Love with You" the narrator is trying hard not to, but.... In "Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards) it is time to go and he is leaving "the girl with the sun in her eyes" for the road, and the song makes me wanna cry (or it would if I weren't so damn macho). It is one of the most beautiful songs anyone has ever sung. Mr. Waits is not trying to be funny here. He's not trying to bend the conventions, or make a musical statement beyond just good, plain, unadorned sweet and lovely singing, and some magnificent accompaniment. The final song is instrumental and the perfect close for a perfect album.

Tom Waits never made another album like this again. Although his voice, lyrics, and instrumentation remained sane for his next album, by the release of Nighthawks At The Diner, his third album, his sweet and melodic balladeer style prevalent on this album had vanished almost completely, and he certainly never sang in this register again. Actually, this is almost the last Tom Waits album I bought: I had all of his later, weirder stuff first. And, the first time I put this CD in, starting it up without really thinking about what it was... I didn't recognize it at first! Tom sings so different. Although this album shows signs that point toward his later wild artistic evolution, there is certainly nothing to suggest the musical and lyrical minefields that he would later plow. Still, had Waits made albums throughout his career that were only mere copies - or logical extensions of this one - he still would've had a rather fine and respectable career. It's so beautiful and melancholic: this is the real "Piano Man" crooning songs of late night loneliness, heartbreak, and melancholy from a late night bar, sitting at a beer-stained, cigarette-adled old piano. It may well be simple and perhaps not very ambitious in scope, but it's just damn near perfect for what it is. This is about the best set of ballads you'll ever hear. Tom's piano playing here is so beautiful, and his voice is sweet. Delicate background vocals and lush strings (including the beautiful closing set title track instrumental) only contribute to the atmosphere. Though undoubtedly stylized, the songs here are just about impeccable. From the classic Ol' 55 to I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You (and very neat and somewhat unique ballad) to the heart-breaking torch song Martha (one of the best I've ever heard), to just - well, the whole album is excellent. Waits never made another album like this one again, and it's worth looking back on this overlooked classic. It is, in many ways, one of his best albums - it's certainly unique among his catalog. Perhaps you might say it is a hidden gem. Many people say that this is his best album - or their favorite - and you can certainly see where they're coming from. Although he would later go on to create much more artistically ambitious works and become one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century, the fact remains that Tom Waits released this overlooked masterpiece of a debut album in 1973, and it is worthwhile for all of us to listen, and belongs in everyone's collection. A finer collection of ballads you will not find.

This is an extraordinaly under-rated record in my opinion. It is definitly in my top 5 favourites of all time and I have a huge, huge record collection and broad music taste. I have never heard a better song than Ol' 55 and I'm not exaggerating. It is a marvellous, beautiful song. Closing Time is a very evocative album. Martha and I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You are legendary tracks. Virginia Avenue and Ice Cream Man are classic bluesy jazz-bar tunes. On Waits VHI Storytellers performance he played Ol' 55 in his big Louis Armstrong-style growl which signifies the song still has meaning for him as he rarely, if not ever, plays material from this period of his career anymore. Waits is a genius who posseses a fantastic imagination and an eccentric personality that always shines through in his music, whether it be his lyrics or the music that always fits them perfectly. He is a true bohemian, not a pretentious wannabe who will disguise his horrible song-writing skills as 'art'. One of the most unique individuals in the history of music, there is only one Tom Waits and that's all there ever was or will be.