Customer Reviews

Heart Attack & Vine

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

No matter what style of music Tom Waits' experiments with, his strongest card is always his lyrics. Before this album, I always found "Closing Time" to be the album that best captures whimsical lyrics of romance, heartbreak, and past loves (no matter how coarse and cynical you may be, try getting through "Martha" or "Grapefruit Moon" without feeling a tug-of-a-heartstring).

Where "Closing Time" had a unique mix of jazz, country, and a smattering of blues, "Heartattack & Vine" plays a harder blues style throughout most of the CD. The songs that steal the show, however, steer away from that raw-blues style.

"Jersey Girl" is an acoustic piece that is an atypical Tom Waits love song. The surprise is that it is a love song by Tom Waits without sarcasm, pining or regret, yet it sounds very much like Tom Waits. And while not a sad song, it is still quite the tearjerker. Perhaps this is because of Waits' gutteral character singing all-out vulnerable worship for the blue-collar Jersey Girl he has fallen in love with. One of the greatest love songs ever written.

"On The Nickel" contains probably the most devastating and beautiful lyrics I have ever heard. "The Nickel" refers to a section of Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles that was gathering place for the homeless and down-&-out folks during the depression era. The song is the title score for the 1980 film by Ralph Waite. The music rings like a childrens' lullaby, with the words harking to the days when these now hapless "Nickel" characters were just little boys running amok and making mischief. This is one of those songs that is both heartbreaking and beautiful, and I have have a hard time picturing it having the full effect if covered by somebody other than Waits.

This whole album is great all around. While "Jersey Girl" and "On The Nickel" are so great they could easily eclipse the rest of the album, there is nothing lame here at all. The title track is direct & raw, and "Saving All My Love For You" stands out among the rest. Give this CD a shot, you will not regret the purchase!

HEARTATTACK AND VINE offers a preview of the Waits to come: the CLOSING TIME and BLUE VALENTINE Waits evolving into the SWORDFISHTROMBONES and RAIN DOGS Waits. It features the gritty, life on the street characters of his previous work (especially the elloquent "On the Nickel"), but starts to do so in a different fashion. The title track and "Mr. Siegal" are bluesy romps (the former declaring that "There ain't no Devil, there's just God when He's drunk"). "Jersey Girl" borders on pop balladry, while "Ruby's Arms" is simply a melodic stunner.

The Devil's in the details, though, and that's where HEARTATTACK truly shines. Listen, why don't you, to the "sha la la" chorus of "Jersey Girl." The passionate urgency Waits puts into his vocals borders on parody, yet rings with the angst of a man yearning for the woman he loves, the one bright point in an otherwise bleary day. The way he growls out the title track, and the tender way he croons the line "I'll prolly be arrested when I'm in my grave, but I'll be saving all my love for you", showcase his emerging talent for delivering lines with ironical perfection. HEARTATTACK is a transitional record, but it is definitely one worth owning. One of his best, actually.

Do it. Buy it! The only thing you'll regret is that you didn't do it before. This is not just one of HIS bests, it's one of THE bests-ever-in whatever genre you want to put Waits' music into. He goes from pulling tears out of you to making you tap your feet and snap your fingers to the most outrageous Waitsonian visions you have ever heard: "...When the b____ is wound up, And her parents are gone, Man you ought to hear her with the siren on." And the details!!! In Saving All My Love For You, he writes, "I spent $15.00 on a prostitute, With too much make-up and a broken shoe..." Even at his most tender, writing the sweetest lullabye, "On The Nickle," he throws in bits about being in jail and poker games. This is a MUST HAVE. Do it. I have to admit, I'm pretty new to Wait's music, I loved Closing Time and Nighthawks, but this one...this is beyond description! I have to agree with another reviewer, this is maybe the best album ever made.

This was the place I discovered the magic of Tom Waits. I appreciate his flowing ballads more than his talking blues style, and this album has plenty of both. Saving All My Love For You is a magnificent example of the former, and so is Jersey Girl, later covered by Bruce Springsteen. The words are sheer poetry. On The Nickel is another gem, with intricate arrangement and beautiful instrumentation, while Mr Siegel is a raucous mixture of both styles, and a brilliant achievement at that. This excellent album concludes with Ruby's Arms, a tender, moving ballad.

Waits is the greatest writer of ballads in America, maybe the world, and this album showcases four of his best. "On The Nickel" and "Jersey Girl" are both stunning and alone they are worth the price of purchase. But there is not a weak song in the lot. Really gritty blues and r&b on tracks 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 interchanged with his ballads on 3, 5, 7, and 9. It's the culmination of his work of the seventies, before he started getting truly weird and experimental.

...and this one, so different from his Weill stuff, it just gets me. One of my top five favorite records ever.
So romantic, and so well-put in the poetry. Apart from the obvious winners, "Ruby's Arms," "Jersey Girl,"
"On The Nickel," and "Downtown," there's so much fun with "Mr. Siegal" and the title track. An absolutely
excellent piece of work, even if Mr. Waits ain't your regular chaw musically.

This would have to be my favourite album by Tom Waits. In his Whiskey Hardened Gravelly Voice he sings about Love Gone Wrong and little hope for Redemption. In the track Saving All My Love For You some of the lyrics contain "I paid fifteen dollars for a prostitute, with too much makeup and a broken shoe. But her eyes were just a counterfeit , she tried to gyp me out. Don't she know that I am still in love with you?". Tom also sings about Goood Loving Gone Sad on the very sad and wistful "Ruby's Arms" This is an excellent album to listen to if you ever come home alone at 3.00 am and are thinking about The One That Got Away.

This album bleeds with lyrical genius...or maybe it's just the Satanist in me...Truly though, the lines are beautiful: "How do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves his porch light on", and "Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just god when he's drunk". I never thought I'd have a favorite album in my life, or a favorite song. There's just too much good stuff out there. But after swimmin' around in this one for awhile there wasn't any chance of escaping. I'll always find myself on Heartattack and Vine, with Mr. Siegal my best and only friend. It's passion, it's love, it's blues, it's vegas, it's being drunk, it's the ups and downs of life's great roller coaster all summed up in one album. When you find yourself at the bottom of bargain scotch you can crank these tunes out, and
trust me, you'll feel like Tom is right there with you. I used to play this album daily at a bar I worked at in Edinburgh Scotland. Those crazy drunkards really loved it to death, which says alot more than any review here can.

With the release of this very strong album in 1980, it became clear that Tom Waits was trying to sneak out of the artistic corner that he had put himself in. Though his first two albums were of a more conventional piano bar man/lounge lizard type, he had since released a series of albums that had set him typecast as a grizzled, drunken, madman bohemian poet/barstool philosopher who chronicled life's dark underbelly with sarcasm, wit, and cynical aplomb. Perhaps sensing that he was beginning to trap himself in a musical straight jacket, Waits was clearly beginning to break out of his own invented musical persona with this album, foreshadowing his totally unexpected and successful musical re-invention with Swordfishtrombones. This was the blusiest Tom Waits album up to this point, shying away from the jazzier influences that had dominated his last several releases. We have a basic, stripped-down musical combo - The "Tom Waits Band" - here that serves us well on most of the songs - which is not to say that the album is not interlaced with delicate piano work and shimmering strings. Waits crows more like a bluesman here as well. Lyrically, Waits had reached the apex of his humor with 1977's Foreign Affairs, and of his... ahem, strangeness with 1978's Blue Valentine. And here, certain of the songs certainly continue along in this vein - namely the title track, 'Till The Money Runs Out, and Mr. Siegel - songs in which Waits cackles and crows along to a bluesy, rhythmically-solid backing in an old "bloozy boozy" voice about topics so outrageous that they nearly defy belief - indeed, the lyrics here may well be Tom Waits at his most outrageous and racy. However, in other songs we being to see Tom tackle the mantle of "sincere sentimentalist" (a persona that would come to full fruition on his 1999 album, Mule Variations) in such songs as Jersey Girl (one of Tom Waits's best songs, and featuring a virtuoso vocal performance) and the beautiful closing track, Ruby's Arms. Though it could be pigeonholed as a transitional album, this is essential Tom Waits. Another must-own from one the most uniquely and distinctive American artists of our time.

...thought you said you'd meet me down on Heartattack and Vine. Now who can resist a song like this? Heartattack and Vine is Tom Waits at his most basic musical setup. He's doing the guitar, bass, and drums setup for the majority. But have no fear, he tickles the ivories on Ruby's Arms and Saving All My Love for You. Perhaps the most catchy little ditty on this album is Mr. Siegal. It's a bluesy rocker, and with a first line like "I spent all my money...in a Mexican whorehouse...across the street from a Catholic church. Now that is poetry in motion. Furthermore, like the song Jersey Girl that Springsteen made famous? Well its here too--by the original artist.