Track Listing

1. Cinny's Waltz
2. Muriel
3. I Never Talk To Strangers
4. Sight For Sore Eyes
5. Potter's Field
6. Burma Shave
7. Barber Shop
8. Foreign Affair

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11266 in Music
• Released on: 1995-01-16
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

CD Description
FOREIGN AFFAIRS is the most ambitious of Waits' '70s albums. In addition to the West Coast jazz style his early work drew so heavily on (here he goes to the source, with vet Shelly Manne on the drum stool), there's also a bit of lavish orchestration to solidify the classy bygone-era feel of Waits' songs. Perfect losers' love songs like "Muriel" were always his bread and butter, but the elegant'40s-ish balladry of "INever Talk to Strangers" (a good-humored beaty-wooed-by-the-beast duet) and the epic beat poetry excursion "Potter's Field" were the furthest extensions to date of Waits' ambitions. Ironically, things are most interesting when the arrangements are scaled down, as on the contagiously sentimental barroom ballad "Sight For Sore Eyes".

Customer Reviews

Hey Tom, you must be reading my mail!
Foreign Affairs is the final seventies Tom Waits album to enter my collection, and I wish it hadn't taken me so long. This is one of his most beautiful albums, and is a melancholic, jazzy delight from start to end. 'I never talk to strangers' is the highlight, a quite hilarious but oh so true pick up scenario in a bar, duetting with Bette Midler. This album's a forgotten classic in the Tom cannon, very easy listening on the surface, but an undercurrant of his inimitable mixture of sadness and wry humour lies bubbling under.

Different but endlessly listenable, great in its way
Fan for 30 years, seen him both times in th UK over the past 18 years, big fan.

Yep, its different to the rest of his albums though none the worse for that.

I probably pull foreign affairs as often as any other album. Listenable, yep; tender; yep; schmaltzy - well, yep in a post irony way that he does so lightly.

And, you know, his heartbreak songs are only the width of a bible flyleaf from seeing redemption...similarly his love songs are only a missed heartbeat from tearing tragedy...thats why we love him so isn't it?

Not typcal Tom, but a classic all the same, 5 bleary stars please.

M

Foreign Affair- "Let me tell about a place I'm heading to��"
"Foreign Affair" is a T.Waits album, which owns a lounge, jazzy feel,that helped pave the way for later work. Here lie some fine songs like "Muriel" and "Burma Shave" which are instantly intriguing tunes. What characterizes this Waitsian output however, is the search for a place to go- musically and lyrically. Duetting ("I Never Talk to Strangers" with Bette Midler) will be developed more effectively on "One from the Heart" soundtrack with Crystal Gayle. "Jack and Neal" seems to be rummaging for a tune, as it finally breaks into covering "California Here I Come". Similarly, "A Sight for Sore Eyes", although pleasing on its own right, seems to be homework for "In the Neighborhood" on "Swordfishtrombones." This is a dress rehearsal for "One From the Heart" and the 3-act operetta to follow i.e."Swordfishtrombones", "Raindogs" and "Frank's Wild Years." It contains interesting insight on Waits' development of song writing and mood. For how can you help not search diamonds even though they, hardheaded, want to stay coal!