Blue Valentine

しがない人々の心情をユーモアに満ちた暖かい視線で語る、酔いどれの奇才、トム・ウェイツ。彼の初期7作品が新たなリマスター音源となってAnti- Recordsより再リリース決定!こちらはそれまでのピアノを中心としたサウンドをギターを重視したサウンドへと変化させ、より生々しく、よりブルージーな世界観を作り上げた、1978年発表の『BLUE VALENTINE』。

Q - 3 Stars - Good - "...mindful that he was getting stuck in a retro groove, Waits switched from piano to electric guitar for much of BLUE VALENTINE....years of nicotine and alcohol abuse were taking their toll nicely on his voice..." Mojo - 5 stars out of 5 -- "These are songs torn from a 'blind and broken heart', from the tear-stained title track to the ill-fated tryst in 'Red Shoes By The Drugstore'..."

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. ~ William Ruhlmann|