Though best known for his guttural, moon dog drawl, Tom Waits is also an accomplished and varied composer. After wrapping his debut album, ‘Closing Time’, with an eponymously titled instrumental, Waits’ Asylum years (1973 – 1980) saw him largely dispense with wordless songs in favour of an ever expanding poetic vocabulary. The majority of this list then is from the more arcane and fevered later period of Waits’ career, a time of instrumentals as varied as an Italian river song and a ghoulish stomp turnaround.

Closing Time – ‘Closing Time’ (1973)

Kicking off with Waits quietly whispering, Okay, let’s do one for posterity’, ‘Closing Time’ feels like the end credits of an early, undiscovered Coppola film. The mournful, delicately layered weave of Waits’ plaintive piano chords beneath Terry Terran’s sweet trumpet gifts the song a spirit of finality, a sense of things being packed away and boxed as the instruments soar and climax throughout. Anri Egilsson on bass ( drafted at the very last moment when album regular Bill Plummer couldn’t be found) and the cello of Jesse Elrich are complex, rewarding partners to Waits & Terran, detectable best in their subtle excellence through a pair of headphones.

Speaking on the recording of the track for Barney Hoskyn’s superb Waits biography Lowside of the Road, the song’s producer, Jerry Yester, recalled: ‘That was absolutely the most magical session I’ve ever been involved with. At the end of it, no one spoke for what felt like five minutes, either in the booth or in the room. No one budged. Nobody wanted the moment to end’.

Instrumental Montage – ‘One From The Heart’ (1982)

Woefully misused in the woeful film of the same name, this jaunty two parter is an excellent blend of Waits’ career up this point. Mixing the lounge blues of earlier jam pieces such as ‘In Shades’ with the encroaching influence of cacophony that was now creeping into Waits’ work.

The opening part pops with a plosive dissonance, constantly switching between a crooked slapped rhythm with random snatches of out of tune keys. Occasionally a building melody is hinted at by the left hand, only for a rich trumpet to shatter and spray that illusion across the maddened Las Vegas canvas. It’s as insatiable a rhythm as Waits has ever achieved with these lyric free explorations.

In the final third the song gives way to a jaunty sea shanty of sorts, the wheezing lung pipes here something that will be familiar to any fan’s of Waits’ later work. Eventually the commanding and surrounding horns deflate and a solitary notes signals the end of the ride down the Strip.

Written as part of Francis Ford Coppola’s bloated disaster movie ‘One From The Heart’, the song is a rare bright spot in an otherwise fairly rote album by Waits’ standards. The process of the film was clearly a stifle to his creativity at times, something he elaborated on when speaking about the piece: ‘I strung them [the songs] together like an overture for a musical. What he [Coppola] wanted was a glass of music that you could add to or take from. Then we got together and made a scratch tape where we spotted the story for music. I was reworking themes so I got about 175 musical cues to be extracted from the score. It ain’t fun doing that’.

Dave The Butcher- ‘Swordfishtrombones’ (1983)

I do try and avoiding using the word ‘vaudevillian’ over and over when describing Waits’ music, but the murky bump of ‘Dave The Butcher’, with its dry, reedy organ and bumbling lackey of a rhythm section just screams burlesque. The song was a breakthrough for Waits at the time, one not just feeling as it it came from an another time, but to genuinely song like it too. The production distant, crumbly and strained, akin to music played in old Nosferatu horrors.

Things develop from obscure to downright creepy when the clopping hollow drums take up residence in the back of the soundscape, rotating and fondling the song as it eventually slides to a few rapid drum beats and a close. When asked about the song and if the character was anyone particular, Waits replied: ‘Yeah. He was somebody we’d met. He had yellow hair, looked completely demented, wore a leopard collar made out of real leopard skin and he had two different kinds of shoes, he wore one boot and one oxford. He worked at a butchery shop so I tried to imagine the music going on in his head while he was cutting up little pork loins’.

Just Another Sucker On The Vine – ‘Swordfishtrombones’ (1983)

Though the trumpet rumpus of this song is a familiar Tom trope, there is a delicate class to the dominant melody line here that exudes a historic, almost regal manner. Waits himself had interestingly stated that he had aimed for the, ‘feel of a band on the deck of the Titanic as it slowly goes under’ in the song, and this sense of grace under pressure is a tangible. The leading instruments striking out resonantly against a slowly disintegrating rhythm section. Joe Romano’s trumpet is a thing to relish and behold throughout.

Midtown – ‘Rain Dogs’ (1985)

One of Tom’s great madness tracks, ‘Midtown’ feels as a collision of cultures, a vicious merging of a propulsive roaring twenties newsbeat rhythm section beneath loud, duelling horns that bellow and caw aggressively.

Paul ‘Hollywood’ Litteral’s trumpet and Bob Funk’s trombone transcend their musicality here as they battle. Feeling more akin to the mating calls of demonic animals on a some forgotten continent. Barely a minute in length, ‘Midtown’ is the perfect shot to the heart.

Dragging a Dead Priest – ‘Night on Earth’ (1992)

Though more of a soundscape or score than an instrumental track per se, this clear predecessor in mood and execution to Mule Variations’ incredible, ‘What’s He Building In There?’, is a terrific artefact that deserves unearthing.

The song is a mass hush of sounds and noises. Clinks and twists, the tightening of a far off screw. Something feels trapped within ‘Dragging a Dead Priest’ and its cries for help can be heard amongst the bellowing distances. This is the sound of new ground being opened.

Fawn – ‘Alice’ (2002)

The closing song of ‘Alice’ sees the most delicate, fragile violin give way to a rippling soundscape of vibes and gentle brushes. The feeling is of midnight or a slow approaching dawn. Towards the end of the unspoken softness a clarinet grasps above the music and brings the song to a delicious, longing end.

Whilst instrumentals mostly seem a testing ground for Waits, a place to see how far things can be taken both sonically and physically, ‘Fawn’ is a rare moment of reprieve, a taking of breath.

Calliope – ‘Blood Money’ (2002)

Interviewed in Q, Waits elaborated on the mysterious old instrument after which this crazed song is named: ‘Playing a calliope is an experience. There’s an old expression, ‘Never let your daughter marry a calliope player.’ Because they’re all out of their minds. Because the calliope is so flaming loud. Louder than a bagpipe. In the old days, they used them to announce the arrival of the circus because you could literally hear it three miles away. Imagine something you could hear three miles away, and now you’re right in front of it, in a studio…playing it like a piano, and your face is red, you’re hair is sticking up, you’re sweating. You could scream and nobody could hear you. It’s probably the most visceral music experience I’ve ever had. And when you’re done, you feel like you should probably should go to the doctor. Just check me over, Doc, I did a couple of numbers on the calliope and I want you to take me through the paces’

There is a lovely creak and wince to this piece, the instrument feeling at both poles apart and at once strangled together in a dissonant mesh of choo-choo chugs and warbles. This is a thick forest of a song, hard to penetrate from any angle and holding no coherence or manner, no real distinctive melodic path. A lesson both in musical history and abstract composition.

Bone Chain – ‘Orphans Bastards (2006)

Without Tom’s ‘Chick A Boom’ posturing throughout, this would’ve been a fairly standard harmonica led romp. With Waits looping his mad cackles beneath however, the juxtaposition becomes enlivening and rich. The two sides of Waits’ later career, the blues throwback and the howling iconoclast, meeting and shaking hands before fading out after a minute.

‘Down in the Hole’ is a fortnightly Tom Waits podcast exploring the entire ouevre of the American singer songwriter, album by album. It is hosted by Sam Whiles (@sidwidle1) and Tom Kwei (@tomkweipoet):

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