The word I would most use to describe Nighthawks at the Diner is uncanny. Not just because it is a studio album that has been recorded with a live audience, but also because of Tom Waits’ voice. Many of his songs are spoken word poetry, and his introductions are spoken with such a cadence that you don’t know where the singing ends and the speaking begins. All of this helps to make Nighthawks at the Diner a singular experience, a gimmick that works, and another great edition to the Waits’ canon.
I won’t be talking about every intro in this review, but I will say that they do a great job of exemplifying Tom Waits the personality. As of writing this I’ve just returned from a music festival, I can tell you that the in-between song banter from many an artist can be just the worst. I have no doubt his lines are scripted, but opening lines like “I’m so horny the crack of dawn better be careful around me” and when being drunk “everything in your fridge is like a science project” indicate an entertaining personality that you wouldn’t mind just hearing talk. And then the songs happen, and that feeling maintains.
Of Tom Waits’ Asylum output, this is the one that is the most straight up jazz music. Much of that is due to the band that Bone Howes and Waits assembled and of them will get their due here. The first side begins with “Emotional Weather Report,” also a forecast (I’m so sorry) on how the album in general will occur, with Jim Hughart’s upright bass sludgy and pushing through Tom Waits’ beat poetry. Both this and the next song, “On a Foggy Night,” make a concerted effort to establish an appropriate scene, pathetic fallacy of the highest order, with lines like “colder than a ticket taker’s smile/at the Ivar Theatre, on a Saturday night” and “all upon a foggy night, on a foggy night/ an abandoned road, in a blurred brocade/ collage, is, that a road motel?” all instigating Tom’s trademark setting of the dark and lost. By contrast Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)” is about food and women, and who could be unhappy about that? Certainly not Waits, who despite being in a “melodramatic nocturnal scene” can’t resist the taste of those diners.
Side two contains only two songs which are a great study in contrast. “Better Off Without a Wife” is a piano ballad, and with the exception of the Reno line could apply to any of the more jaded souls from the aftermath of a marriage (or those who do not wish to get married at all). The bridal chorus is a great example of Tom Waits sarcastic humour, is yet another instance of Tom being 26 going on 66, but is filled with a heartbroken sincerity. Meanwhile, “Nighthawk Postcard” and its “inebriational travelogue” is definitely the jazzier and more beatnik of the two, clocking in at eleven and a half minutes. But in that time we can some fantastic atmospheric drumming from Bill Goodwin, bright piano from either Waits or Mike Melvoin (I presume it’s the latter, but I don’t know) and some great saxophone from Pete Christlieb, particularly in this songs many tempo changes. My joint favourite track on the album, not just for its ambitiousness, but for its amazing depiction of a setting, more than maybe any Waits song that has come before it.
My other favourite is that which opens the next disc, “Warm Beer and Cold Women,” which continues that sincere melancholy from the previous side. Waits gets to be his version of a crooner (his voicer gtting much closer to a Howlin Wolf type) as he gives what is probably his greatest vocal performance on this record, whilst Christlieb gets to indulge in some marvellous saxophone solos. Meanwhile “Puntnam County” contains my favourite lyric of the album – “Stratocasters slung over the burgermeister beer guts” – just for the precision of the image alone, which has the sax instead of soloing blow long dark notes that rings through the room as much as the bass. “Spare Parts I (Nocturnal Emission)” continues Waits obsession with cars as he even mouths the sounds of them, as well as trading some great piano slides and skills with Melvoin. The bit two thirds through where the drums speed up and Waits just spits out words is just magic.
The final side has Tom Waits showing his more serious side. Not that it wasn’t there before, but “Nobody” is cry for love without a single sense of sarcasm, and contains, beautiful entrancing piano scales as well as Goodwin’s drums and Hughart’s bass complementing the slow and vulnerable character that Wait’s lyrics brings (“Nobody/ will ever love you/ the way I could love you/ cause nobody’s that strong.”) The seriousness of “Big Joe and the Phantom 309” comes more Wait’s grave readings of the story, the first “cover” on an album yet one whose automotive and dark theme more than fits in to the proceedings. This then continues onto “Spare Parts II” – the album’s closer – which, although an instrumental, the vehicular themes help to give the impression of moving along as opposed to just stopping. The swinging rhythm from the band as they are being introduced demonstrates how much of a talented group Waits and Howes got onto the record, and they propel the final proceedings to brightest and most upbeat of the entire album as Tom Waits cheekily announces that he’s going to “plant you now, dig you later.”
Nighthawks at the Diner could have ended up a tired gimmick that outstayed its welcome from the second song, but Waits and the bands’ commitment ensures that this is another success. Whilst there may be Waits’ albums on his Asylum run that I prefer due to individual songs, the cohesive nature of the project of the hand is so singular that it more than gains my admiration. And because of the way his personality shines on both the songs and the intros, if I wanted to introduce the jazzier side of Waits to someone, this is the record I would pick this one.
What did you think of the album though?
Tom Waits Album Rankings
- The Heart of Saturday Night
- Nighthawks at the Diner
- Closing Time