Tom Waits - Blue Valentine

To listen to Tom Waits is enter in a strange place. There's no middle term, you either love him or hate him (specially after he went into the weird world of experimentation during the Island years). His low growl voice has been the origin of myths and strange legends that no one would like to see crushed, and his notion of how a musician/artist should deal with what he's producing and distributing predecesses the likes of Pearl Jam and Neil Young.





Me, I'm a massive fan of his work in the 70's, while he was signed to the Asylum records. In that moment in space and time, his songs defined for me what a blues singer should sound like: Some dude drunk on bad bourbon, singing about hookers and bitter lifes, in a shitty corner of some little joint smelling of cigarrettes and bad beer. That's what one could expect in this "Blue Valentine". It starts a bit slowly, but after the song "Romeo is bleeding", you're in for the ride. Or, you have though twice and switched to Nina Simone. One of them both...