Welcome to the hipster blues. By the time of this 1977 recording, Tom Waits had fully transformed himself into a musical character actor from another era, caught somewhere between Raymond Chandler and the Beat Generation. His vocals here are some of the most mannered performances this side of Bukowski (and probably had something to do with the movie roles he won in the coming years). His use of strings on some of these tracks can occasionally drift dangerously close to schmaltz, but that's easily compensated by such highlights as his duet with Bette Midler on "I Never Talk to Strangers" and the breathless melodrama of "Burma-Shave." Cool. --Steve Appleford
Review by William Ruhlmann
Tom Waits gives one side of his fifth album, Foreign Affairs, to his more structured, bluesy ballads and the other to his jazz raps. On side one, you get his duet with Bette Midler on the singles-bar dialogue "I Never Talk to Strangers" and his take on his Beat predecessors Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy on "Jack & Neal." On side two, you find the extended observations of "Potter's Field" and "Burma-shave." Waits' voice is becoming ever more gravelly, but his basic musical approach remaines the same, and by this point he'd attracted a steady cult audience that enjoyed his verbal flights and boozy philosopher persona, even as critics began to complain that he was repeating himself. By the way, that's Waits' then-girlfriend, the then-unknown Rickie Lee Jones, on the cover with him.
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