Tom Waits / Blue Valentine
Artist Tom Waits
Album Title: Blue Valentine
Album Cover:
Primary Genre Rock: Folk-Rock
Format CD
Released 09/00/1978
Reissue Date 00/00/1993
Label Elektra/Asylum Records/Warner Bros
Catalog No 162-2
Bar Code No 0 7559-60533-2 7
Packaging Jewelcase
Tracks
1. Somewhere (From West Side Story) (3:52)
2. Red Shoes By The Drugstore (3:14)
3. Christmas Card From Hooker In Minneapolis (4:33)
4. Romeo Is Bleeding (4:52)
5. $29.00 (8:15)
6. Wrong Side Of The Road (5:14)
7. Whistlin'past The Graveyard (3:17)
8. Kentucky Avenue (4:49)
9. A Sweet Little Bullet From A Pretty Blue Gun (5:36)
10. Blue Valentines (5:50)
Date Acquired 04/23/1992
Personal Rating
Acquired from Roadrunner Records
Purchase Price 13.00

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Reviews
All Music Guide Review:

Review by William Ruhlmann

Two welcome changes in style made Blue Valentine a fresh listening experience for Tom Waits fans. First, Waits alters the instrumentation, bringing in electric guitar and keyboards and largely dispensing with the strings for a more blues-oriented, hard-edged sound. Second, though his world view remains fixed on the lowlifes of the late night, he expands beyond the musings of the barstool philosopher who previously had acted as the first-person character of most of his songs. When Waits does use the first-person, it's to write a "Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis," not the figure most listeners had associated with the singer himself. The result is a broadening of subject matter, a narrative discipline that makes most of the tunes story songs, and a coherent framing for Waits' typically colorful and intriguing imagery. These are not radical reinventions, but Waits had followed such a rigidly stylized approach on his previous albums that for anyone who had followed him so far, the course correction was big news.

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