SE 2, EP 9: Tom Waits - Closing Time

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On this episode, we discuss Closing Time, the debut album by enigmatic singer-songwriter Tom Waits. Released on David Geffen’s Asylum label in 1973, it immediately stood out from most of the folk and Americana tinged offerings from the other Artists on the label like Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and the Eagles. 

Closing Time is considered by many Tom Waits fans who prefer his more experimental and avant-garde output as an outlier within his discography. It is certainly his most straightforward and accessible album.  His “gateway” album, if you will.  

As the title (and cover) indicates, Closing Time was an album of songs that embrace a time gone by; a time of smoky bars, peopled with earnest and lonely individuals, ruminating on lost love and a life unfulfilled. Heavily influenced by the beat writers and Charles Bukowski, it's the aural equivalent to a film noir The fact that the stories told by Waits seem beyond the comprehension of the 23-year-old musician who wrote them makes listening to them all the more compelling. 

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