Closing time

"Singer/songwriter/pianist Tom Waits is more than a chip off the Randy Newman block. Though he sounds like a boozier, earthier version of same and delights in rummaging through the attics of nostalgia, the persona that emerges from this remarkable debut album is Waits' own, at once sardonic, vulnerable and emotionally charged ... Like Loudon Wainwright, who offers a more sophisticated variety of tragicomedy, Waits dances on the line between pathos and bathos without going too far in the wrong direction. Both singers know how and when to ham it up; both succeed on their instinctive acting ability as much, if not more than through musical intuitiveness".

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"Tom Waits' debut album is a minor-key masterpiece filled with songs of late-night loneliness ... Closing Time quietly announces the arrival of a talented songwriter whose self-consciousness, wry barroom humor, and solitary melancholy made him a standout from virtually all of his peers, and difficult to pigeonhole".

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