Product Description:
Original score composed by Tom Waits. Performed by Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle.
Recorded at Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood, California.
Tom Waits provided a colorful soundtrack for this 1982 Coppola film. These songs provide an important bridge between Waits' '70s work and the breakthrough of the following year's SWORDFISHTROMBONES. Many of the tunes are in the romantic ballad mode, jazzy torch songs based around Waits' piano and occasionally a sympathetic orchestra. Thanks to the contextual constrictions, ONE FROM THE HEART finds Waits at his most lyrically straightforward as he spars with an unlikely duet partner, Crystal Gayle. Surprisingly, Gayle's smooth, liquid tenor contrasts perfectly with Waits' gritty baritone rasp, the ultimate Beauty and the Beast situation. When the arrangements get a little more adventurous in the album's second half, it's like a finger pointing the way to the wild artistic freedom of SWORDFISHTROMBONES, but this album is full of affectingly beautiful songs that make it intrinsically desirable.
Entertainment Reviews:
Rolling Stone - 3/4/04, p.64
4 stars out of 5 - "[A] smooth-sailing counterpart to a beautiful car crash of a movie....this is [Tom Waits's] sweetest jazz, and duetting partner Crystal Gayle similarly turns in her juiciest performance ever."
Entertainment Weekly - 10/12/01, p.86
Ranked #99 in EW's "100 Best Movie Soundtracks" - "...Easy listening for the 3 am closing time of your soul..."
Q - p.44
"[S]ublime....Woozily re-imagines the Hollywood musical's golden age as a romantic noir nirvana."
Uncut - 4/04, p.98
5 stars out of 5 - "It's the best thing Waits has ever done....Beyond all doubt the most integral and affecting soundtrack of the last quarter-century."
Mojo (Publisher) - 6/02, p.67
Included in Mojo's "100 Coolest Movie Soundtracks" - "...the songs are memorable and the best jazzers on the West Coast provide the surroundings..."
Mojo (Publisher) - p.107
3 stars out of 5 - "Sharing the vocals with Crystal Gayle helps sweeten the mix but the smart money's on the grizzled one."
