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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
"I was sick through that whole period. It was starting to wear on me, all the touring. I'd been traveling quite a bit, living in hotels, eating bad food, drinking a lot - too much. There's a lifestyle that's there before you arrive and you're introduced to it. It's unavoidable."
Tom Waits said this about the time the album was recorded, and these are exactly the feelings reflected on the album. Inebriated tales of drunks and hard-luck people trying to to cope with life. Disillusionment with the commercial and success. All wrapped up in drunken piano ballads and voice weary with extensive cigarette smoking and too much whiskey.
So, the atmosphere and themes are great; it's really what makes this album. But Waits doesn't just settle with this, no, he goes on to write some of the greatest tunes of his career, the most wonderful lyrics he ever wrote and delivers some of his finest vocals ever.
From the very moment the string section of "Tom Traubert's Blues" fades in, the album grips you by the heart. It gives you everything; grand weepers such as "Tom Traubert's Blues", up-beat, jazzy and groovy pieces such as "Step Right Up", bittersweet ballads like "I Wish I Was In New Orleans", funny drunk ramblings in "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) and some darker material such as "The One That Got Away" and "Invitation To The Blues".
Every song on here has its own life, and stirs your emotions in different ways. The album is an amazing listen from both a musical and emotional point of view. Do yourself a favor and don't miss out on this one.
Tom Waits said this about the time the album was recorded, and these are exactly the feelings reflected on the album. Inebriated tales of drunks and hard-luck people trying to to cope with life. Disillusionment with the commercial and success. All wrapped up in drunken piano ballads and voice weary with extensive cigarette smoking and too much whiskey.
So, the atmosphere and themes are great; it's really what makes this album. But Waits doesn't just settle with this, no, he goes on to write some of the greatest tunes of his career, the most wonderful lyrics he ever wrote and delivers some of his finest vocals ever.
From the very moment the string section of "Tom Traubert's Blues" fades in, the album grips you by the heart. It gives you everything; grand weepers such as "Tom Traubert's Blues", up-beat, jazzy and groovy pieces such as "Step Right Up", bittersweet ballads like "I Wish I Was In New Orleans", funny drunk ramblings in "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) and some darker material such as "The One That Got Away" and "Invitation To The Blues".
Every song on here has its own life, and stirs your emotions in different ways. The album is an amazing listen from both a musical and emotional point of view. Do yourself a favor and don't miss out on this one.
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I have listened to tom waits since I was a kid, (which I have my dad to thank for), and only really recently bought some of his stuff my self. However I believe that it is not too naïve of me to say that this really is one of the finest albums there is. From the opening tracks of “Tom Traubert’s Blues” and “Step Right Up” (my dads favourite), the album is decorated with melody and blues. However my favourites are the slightly insane: “The piano has been drinking (not me)” and “Pasties and a G-String” where I think his genius is most evident. Now don’t get me wrong I am by no means of the imagination any “Tom Waits” expert (hey I am only 20), though I do know great music when I hear it, and there are very, very few albums that I would give 5 stars in any kind or rating. However this has always been one of my favourites and is easily worthy of a 5 star rating. There isn’t really a great deal else that can be said without listening to the album for your self, but worth mentioning is that Waits is one of the few artist out there who has been (and still is) recognised for his talent rather than his “commercial appeal”, and for which reason, in my mind, has never sold out.
18 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
"Small Change", in my opinion, is the finest addition to the Tom Waits cannon, and the best example I can think of of an album that consistently showcases brilliant songwriting. The quality never wavers, and the tone is more personal than on many other Waits albums. The result is a bar-stool confessional, life as seen through the whisky glass; hard luck stories told for anybody who cares to listen...all to a soundtrack that is both bluesy, jazzy, and beatnik-funky. Wait's pre-eminence as a writer has long earned him kudos from more prominent artists, and the classic opener on this album ("Tom Traubert's Blues") gave Rod Stewart (a confirmed Waits fan) an unlikely chart hit a few years back. This is a sorry, booze-soaked tale of unrequited love, underpinned by a lush, stringed arrangement that lends it a festive air, which wouldn't seem out of place on Heart Attack and Vine. Next up is the beat-poet satire on the mania of commerce that is "Step Right Up"...here Waits adopts the voice of a "closing down, everything must go" salesperson of irrelevant specificity - the song's all-embracing intentions are brilliantly inscribed with a wonderfully timed bit of scat singing as Waits recites "that's right you too can be the proud owner of this quality hoosay boosing boosong..!!" Classic. Waits wouldn't look out of place in the company of the contemporary literati. "Jitterbug Boy" is another boozy confessional, with Waits's down-on-his-luck narrator sounding as though he'd had a few too many before collaring a bar neighbour to spew out some unlikely stories to ("once upon a time I was in showbiz too..")...a similar tone but possibly even more pathetic (and beautiful sounding) lament arrives later with "Bad liver and a broken heart". In this, another alcoholic, sorry tale of unrequited love, Waits muses on the girl who "tore him apart", and in just a couple of pointed metaphors conveys a girl to die for: "she was sharp as a razor, and soft as a prayer." All the songs on this album are worth a mention. "The piano has been drinking" (not me!) is an hilarious description of a shabby late night boozer in a series of compressed metaphors ("the spotlight looks like a prizon break") in which the singer subtly suggests that maybe he is as lurid as everything else about the place; and yet comes out of it engagingly qualified in a turn of phrase as comic as it is acerbic ("the owner is a mental midget with the IQ of a fencepost".) This is a truly great album, at turns moving, funny, voyeuristic (witness the leering narrator of the album's second beat poem, "Pasties and a G-String", in which he confesses "I'm getting harder than Chinese Algebra" whilst ogling over strippers in a - you've guessed it - late night joint.) Overall, "Small Change" is an ingeniously written, booze-soaked love-poem to the late night wino life of the big American cities - by the unlikeliest crooner of them all.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
An Early Waits Classic
'Foreign Affairs' is my favourite but who is content with one Waits album? I sometimes wish that Waits would dispose of the personna that he acts. Read more
Published 4 months ago by lonniej
Must Have
I was just looking through a list, and this came up at three quid. It's one of the best albums ever , if you don't have it, you don't have a record collection. Buy it. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mr. W. Bird
Good old Tom
Bought this on vinyl back inthe 70s and it had all the sultry melancholic overtones so typical of Tom Waits and here we are, middle aged and missing him having bought only one... Read more
Published 6 months ago by S. C. W. Andrews
waits in full beatnik mood - a landmark waits album
waits here completes the transformation to jazzy beat poet, complete with a new gruff voice that sounds 30 years older than he actually is. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Biffer Spice
The bar stools are on fire
A splendidly-named movement teacher, Jo Jelly, had the honour of introducing me to the magisterial Tom Waits. Read more
Published 8 months ago by GlynLuke
I'll accept your invitation to the blues Mr Waits
I love everything about this album, even the trashy cover. And on the back there's a fabulous black and white pic of Waits smoking Lucky Strikes, taken by Bruce Weber (director of... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Sebastian Palmer
CAN'T FAULT ME FOR NOT TRYING!
I started off with "Nighthawks At The Diner", and as my Amazon review shows, I was unable to find any traces of the 'stardust' that Tom Waits sprinkles over many people. Read more
Published 16 months ago by DOPPLEGANGER
Didn't do it for me!
Beatnik, gruff.... from the description in the blurb ... to me it sounds more like half drunk with a bad case of laryngitis. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Comical Engineer
Truly remarkable
Have been a Tom Waits fan for almost 30 years. Having just read the book "Small Change - a life by Tom Waits" just had to own the CD. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Zoe N
You cannot be serious
I came to Waits music via Duke Robillards excellent cover of "Low Side of the Road" and on the back of this I bought "Small Change", further encouraged by the reviews here. Read more
Published on 15 July 2008 by F. M. Muse
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