Tom Waits: Heartattack & Vine [ANTI-]

Why you'll love it

This remastered reissue was pressed at Quality Record Pressings and comes with a printed inner sleeve. Bruce Springsteen took "Jersey Girl" into his own live sets, and the album appears in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

This edition

• Remastered
• Pressed at Quality Record Pressings
• Printed inner sleeve
• Lyrics included
• Stereo mix

About the album

Heartattack and Vine is the sound of Tom Waits changing costumes. His last album for Asylum, recorded at Filmways/Heider Studio B in Hollywood in the summer of 1980 with longtime producer Bones Howe, it trades some of the late-night piano for grit. Waits called the title track a breakthrough, with Yardbirds-style fuzz guitar and a drummer swapping brushes for sticks, and said the album pointed toward the experiments to come.

"In Shades" is a smoky, swaggering instrumental, "Downtown" and "'Til the Money Runs Out" strut through the seedier side of town, and "Mr. Siegal" rattles along in the same spirit. On the other side of the ledger, "On the Nickel" was written for Ralph Waite's film of the same name, "Saving All My Love for You" is pure barroom tenderness, and "Jersey Girl" and "Ruby's Arms" rank among the loveliest ballads he ever wrote.

Jean-Luc Godard put "Ruby's Arms" in First Name: Carmen, and Kazuo Ishiguro said the song shaped The Remains of the Day. Not many albums can claim a hand in a Booker Prize winner; this one managed it without even trying.

Also at Kops: more Tom Waits on vinyl · browse Singer-Songwriter

Tracklist

Listen

On Asylum / Anti- (cat# 87571-1), a reissue of the 1980 album.