Track Listing

1. In Shades
2. Saving All My Love For You
3. Downtown
4. Jersey Girl
5. Till The Money Runs Out
6. On The Nickel
7. Mr Seigal
8. Ruby's Arms
9. Heart Attack And Vine

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1796 in Music
• Released on: 1993-05-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Tom Waits's hipster persona began to evaporate at the beginning of the 1980s, but not before he released the transitional-- but eminently worthwhile--Heartattack and Vine, which contained "On the Nickel", a Dickensian tale of street life, and "Jersey Girl," a song Bruce Springsteen gave a far wider airing to on his Live 1975-1985 box set. You can hear hints of Waits's style growing more trenchant on songs like "Downtown" and the stark, bluesy title track, which contains the immortal line "Don't you know there ain't no devil / That's just God when he's drunk." Indeed. --Daniel Durchholz

CD Description
The most bluesy and visceral of Waits' mid-period albums, HEARTATTACK encapsulates the jazzy piano ballads ("Ruby's Arms"), beatnik imagery ("Mr. Siegal") and seedy, blues-inflected tales from America's underbelly that he perfected in his first decade of recording. This is an album of extremes, as Waits is unabashedly (and convincingly) sentimental on "On The Nickel" and "Jersey Girl" (later covered by Springsteen) and unflinchingly hard-boiled on the title track and the hustler's anthem "'Til the Money Runs Out". The concise, compact arrangements (he had never grooved so fiercely) foreshadowed the rhythmic invention to come in Waits' later work.

Customer Reviews

Life changing moment
One day I borrowed a cassette from a colleague. .... But when the tape ended and it auto-turned over to other side ... I was astounded and drawn into a dark, beautifuly tragic musical landscape! ...the likes I haven't heard before.
It was Heart attack and Vine.
The first listen was magic. After that I was a Waits convert.
I loved this album, I love this man.....
I played it to friends late one night after the pub, and its still great to see peoples expressions when hearing the first track for the first time. Brilliant! Drive to it! Sleep to it! Just buy it and enjoy.

o.k i am biased
i am a huge fan but if you have never heard any Tom Waits ..this is as good an introduction as any. What an underated artist. I have heard/got all of his stuff and as a social/commentary,pertinent observer on alinenation/vignette wizzard/humorist/ wit/
needless to say..do yourself a favour ..just hear a c.d. and hopefully you will agree.
Modern day Oscar Wilde crossed with Jean Genet?

Brilliant
You might remember, some years ago now, a bizarre Levi's advert with a funeral procession in it and a strange blues track that begins 'Liar Liar, your pants on fire'. That was a Screaming Jay Hawkins cover of the Tom waits track 'Heart Attack and Vine'. An absolutely fantastic white trash blues ramble that pretty much sums up this album.

If 'The Heart of Saturday Night' is the sound of a down-and-out pulling it all together for a late night performance in a jazz club, this is the sound of the morning after. The art work on the cd features Tom Waits' face on a yellowing newspaper and the music sounds like that of someone who has just woken up on a park bench wrapped in this newspaper. It's downbeat blues with the vocals of someone really trying to shake off their hangover.

'Heart Attack and Vine' is superb - so original. 'Downtown' is sleazy blues, 'Til the Money Runs Out' is edgy and paranoid, 'Mr. Siegal' is a drunken brawl waiting to happen. 'On the Nickel' and 'Ruby's Arms' sound like ballads from a Gershwin musical, if Gershwin had ever written anything about tramps in Times Square.

This album bridges the gap between Waits' earlier work and his later experimental output. If you haven't heard much Waits, the closest thing I can think of is the slower, more sentimental, tracks by The Pogues - think 'Fairytale of New York' only spread out across the year rather than just a Christmas song. It's as far from the sanitised output of your average record label as you can get and should be worth a listen on that basis alone...