Tom Waits - Foreign Affairs (Remastered) (1977/2018) [Hi-Res]

1977’s Foreign Affairs takes the jazz and poetry that Tom Waits explored on his earlier albums in a more cinematic direction, foreshadowing his own breakthrough work in the 80s. Opening with the instrumental Cinny’s Waltz and featuring some new standards like Muriel and I Never Talk To Strangers, his dramatic duet with Bette Midler, this album gets into some of Waits’ most ambitious storytelling ever. Foreign Affairs also features the jazzy, colourful Jack and Neil and the sweeping, dramatic Potters Field as well as classic Waits ballads Burma Shave and Sight for Sore Eyes.

Foreign Affairs is possibly Waits’ most consistently “Chandlerian” album, a series of vignettes from “dimestore novels” and “penny arcades” that could all take place in the same seedy block of skid row Los Angeles (or New York, in the case of “Potter’s Field”). Features Waits’ duet with Bette Midler on the singles-bar dialogue "I Never Talk to Strangers" and his take on his Beat predecessors Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy on "Jack & Neal."

"Tom Waits gives one side of his fifth album, Foreign Affairs, to his more structured, bluesy ballads and the other to his jazz raps. On side one, you get his duet with Bette Midler on the singles-bar dialogue "I Never Talk to Strangers" and his take on his Beat predecessors Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy on "Jack & Neal." On side two, you find the extended observations of "Potter's Field" and "Burma-shave." Waits' voice is becoming ever more gravelly, but his basic musical approach remaines the same, and by this point he'd attracted a steady cult audience that enjoyed his verbal flights and boozy philosopher persona, even as critics began to complain that he was repeating himself." (William Ruhlmann, AMG)