Before he gargled barbed wire and used the Elephant Man’s spine for a marimba, Tom Waits crooned at the Joanna in the smoky halo of a half-busted spotlight. His masterpiece debut, 1973’s Closing Time, introduced a songwriter who seemingly could knock out classics in between coffee breaks.
While follow-up The Heart Of Saturday Night – now reissued on 50th-anniversary coloured vinyl – doesn’t have anything quite as familiar as Ol’ 55 or Martha, it still has a lot to recommend it. There’s the freewheeling dance of night-out opener New Coat Of Paint, the aching romanticism of San Diego Serenade, and the after-hours melancholy to Semi Suite. And while you might think that Fumblin’ With The Blues or even the sentimental Shiver Me Timbers were Waits sailing slightly on autopilot, his melodic skill and ever-present charm let him get away with it.
Perhaps the best song here is the out-for-kicks ‘crack of the pool balls, neon buzzing’ title track which nods in Jack Kerouac’s direction, but it’s the full beat poet, spoken rather than sung tracks that indicated that Waits wasn’t merely the boho Sinatra of the In The Wee Small Hours-aping cover art. Diamonds On My Windshield barrels down the interstate, and The Ghosts Of Saturday Night employs his piano as a broom to sweep up the dust of the fading gleam.
It’s not the best of his pre-Island Records freak-out albums (that’s possibly Blue Valentine), but they’re all pretty great and this one is no exception.
