Personal favourites from days-passed.
May contain nostalgic gibbering.
Small Change (1976) – Tom Waits
‘So you ask me what I’m doing here holding up the lamp-post,
Flipping this quarter, trying to make up my mind
And if it’s heads I go to Tennessee, and tails I buy a drink,
If it lands on the edge I keep talking to you’
Due to his constant reinvention of himself over a five decade period and a gifted eye for both melody and lyrics, Tom Waits is hands-down my favourite singer-songwriter. Thus, asking me to choose my favourite Tom Waits album is like asking me to choose between my gorgeous, mangled, inebriated and entirely hypothetical children. Does one opt for the undeniably cool atmosphere of Nighthawks at the Diner? The heartfelt crooning of Closing Time? The beautifully dislocated howling of Rain Dogs? Or even the stripped-down three-chord growl of Heart Attack and Vine?
I would argue that few would opt for my own choice of Small Change but I’m here to explain why it’s my favourite, and why you should listen to it if you haven’t done so in awhile, or (heaven forbid) you never have before.
Small Change is an ode to the Jazz Age in practically every aspect and it is at this point that I feel I must attest that, despite my boyish charm and penchant for spontaneous song-and-dance numbers, I am far from a ‘Ryan Gosling- in La La Land’ type jazz enthusiast. It being love letter to the Golden Age of Jazz is part of what makes it as unique as it is, as it was written and recorded in a time when jazz wasn’t necessarily the coolest thing around.
Pictured: The Coolest Thing Around
At this stage of his career, Waits had adopted the role of a wino-beatnik, singing songs of love, booze and burlesque and paying heavy tribute to Kerouac, Armstrong and Gershwin and Small Change is perhaps this particular period’s shining moment. Sure Nighthawks at the Diner has the banter, but this one has the SONGS.
When going into what makes it such a gem, it’s impossible to ignore album opener ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)’. It’s a bold statement in that not only is it far more orchestral and lyrically delicate than anything Waits had released beforehand but it is sung in a guttural, almost monstrous vocal timbre, a far cry from the ‘waistcoat-folk troubadour’ voice that Waits had sung in only a few years earlier.
Such a vocal style has become something of a trademark for Waits but here it was a declaration that he was now playing by his own rules, officially setting the tone for the album’s remaining 40 minutes which in he slurs, swings, scats and overall, shines. It’s introspective and touching but not without a sense of boozy lyrical humour and I feel the idea to close such a nostalgia-fest with ‘I Can’t Wait to Get Off’ work is an inspired move.
Though I feel that Closing Time is the best place to start one’s Tom Waits exploration, it is only to put the rest of his work in context. Small Change is when he really started to become a master of his craft as both a songwriter and arranger as well as a true original with the songs being executed with such a cool articulation that makes it both out-of-time and ultimately, timeless.
Dyladvised 