Released on 9 September 1980 "Hearttack And Vine" was the 7th., studio album by US singer, actor, musician and composer Tom Waits, it was his final album to be released on the Asylum label with long-term producer Bones Howe before a remarkable musical reinvention. The album spawned the single "Jersery Girl".
Lyrically, "Jersey Girl" conjured Bruce Springsteen’s world, but the tune’s eager romanticism becomes warped in the caldron of what’s left of Waits’ voice. "Saving All My Love for You,", "Ruby’s Arms" and "On the Nickel" boast the same morbid pathos as "Jersey Girl." With their wistful folk-pop melodies and Fifties film-score orchestrations, they suggest the pop-song equivalents of hand-tinted antique post cards.
"On the Nickel" was recorded for the Ralph Waite film of the same name. It was used as the theme song for the 1985 "The Atlanta Child Murders" miniseries. Waits was already messing with off-kilter rhythms even in the most conventionally structured blues and jazz songs, with nastier-sounding guitars -- he plays a particularly gnarly style of rhythm on this entire album.
Five of these nine tracks were rooted in blues with rock edges and R&B beats. By this time, his singing voice had deteriorated to a gasping-for-breath whiskey-and-cigarettes growl that could make words indecipherable from one another, but his jazzman-inspired phrasing more than compensated. The opening title track with its razored electric guitars, walking upright bass and natural sound, the percussion and tenor sax that makes Waits' vocal grimace and growl even more menacing. The tune details substance abuse, denizens of life's dark side, and a view of God and the Devil as sober and drunk sides of the same person.
The slow blues instrumental "In Shades," which sets up the first of a series of memorable ballads. "Saving All My Love for You" showed Waits' piano and a string chart by Jerry Yester frame a scenic, confessional, broken love song. "Downtown" adds funk to the blues, and organ sound confrontation with distorted electric guitars and Waits' declarative guttural snarl.
"Jersey Girl," a dramatic ballad that overlaps with the sound world of Bruce Springsteen so much -- complete with glockenspiel -- that the Boss covered it, released it as a live B-side, and made it a part of his live sets for decades. "On the Nickel" is another of Waits' more arresting ballads evoking an earlier and grittier era in American life and culture. It was used as the title track of Ralph Waite's film of the same name -- Waits scored the entire film. "Mr. Siegal" is a gangster's boast that rivals the hip poetry of Lord Buckley. The near baroque woodwind and reed chart that introduces album finale "Ruby's Arms" marks one of Waits' most beautiful and unusual ballads, the use of strings as a frame for his singing is sparse and roomy, allowing the songwriter's piano to accompany his achingly sad vocal with all the poignancy, regret, and resolve that only the romantically bereft can muster.
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