Customer Reviews

Heartattack and Vine

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had just about given up on trying to find any new music worth listening to. I had heard some of Tom Wait's stuff before but I hadn't really gotten into it for reasons I won't go into. I bought this CD hoping that it would have one or two songs that were worth listening to, which unfortunately is the most I've come to hope for these days. It seems like 90% of the CD's made are pure trash, and of the other 10% most of the songs are filler because the artist really doesn't have much to say.

Once I started listening to this CD I was pretty much blown away. It was like I had found buried treasure, or I had been suddenly made well after a long illness. It was Glorious! I felt like falling on my knees and thanking God or whoever had made this possible. I felt like music wasn't dead after all, there are still true artists out there, making beautiful music, I think I'll be buying a lot of Tom Wait's CD's in the future. I don't think they'll all be as good as this one, but I can hope.

If you don't have ``Small Change'' and for some unknown reason refuse to get it, then HeartAttack & Vine is the quintessential Tom Waits. It will repay the many listens it deserves. Play it, play it, and play it. Then, if you are like so many, it will become almost drug-like: you will then demand to hear it, again and again. It is not his best album (no, I won't enter that battle), but it really is one of his best, and worth the price, really. Then, get ``Small Change'', and all the others. Once you ``get'' Waits, you really have to get it all.

There is no other album, except perhaps Thunder Road which moves me as much. Tom Waits has a talent for making even the most mundane, simple, cliched words become poetic. He sings his heart into each word-just extraordinary.

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!

For those of you who haven't experienced Mr. Waits before, please allow yourself to get past the wickedly raspy vocals before judging this genius (much as you would Bob Dylan). Believe me, after a while you'll think he sings like Sinatra. At first you may think it's just a blues album. But this is ten floors down from blues. This is a look up at the world from some poor soul's rock bottom moment and it is beautiful in its honesty and soul. It's heartbreaking and sarcastic, angry and remorseful, sad and sympathetic. I often chastize myself when I realize how long it's been since I listened to this wonderful album. It is absolutely mesmerizing.

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.

If push had to come to shove and I was forced to choose just one definitive album above all others to keep forever - this would be it. Quite simply, this is probably the best album ever made, and that's shrugging off some pretty fierce competition; from Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" to The Band's "....Big Pink" to Rickie Lee Jones' "Pirates".
Tom Waits is a lyrical, melodic and poetic genius, and everything that's good and right about him comes together on this album. There're heart wrenching ballads in the form of "On the Nickel" and "Rubie's Arms". There's the fantastic, rautious narratives of "Mr. Siegal" and the title track; all wrapped in spot-on production and great, understated muscianship. Really, how could anyone live without this?!

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.

Funny, I've got tons of CD's and tapes, but this is the one
I listen to every day. Just gotta have my "Jersey Girl," "On The Nickel," "Saving All My Love For You," etc.
I don't feel complete unless I hear them at least once a day.

They help me write. Help me see things - everyday things -
more poetically. They make me cry, make me laugh...hell, I worship this guy. Tom, thanks for the music. You are the greatest - what would we do without you?

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.