Crystals finest work
Rick V. Beckner | REDMOND,OR | 10/03/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is a five star CD . . .you should buy it.
For me . . this is all about Crystal Gayle and that is why I bought it.
You will hear some of her best work ever on this and well worth the price.
I can barely get hip on Tom Waits slurred attempts at singing and at times you wish he would just go away.
He is a master musician however and this is a very good release.
Perhaps for the more discriminating,sophisticated conosur of the arts,this is not punk,hip hop or anything popular."
THIS One's From the Heart
R. M. Ettinger | Cleveland Heights, OH USA | 01/10/2010
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Yeah - you are not seeing things here: Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle. Together.
'One From the Heart' was a Francis Ford Coppola movie from 1982. A visually stunning movie, set in Vegas (or a complete set to mimic Vegas that almost bankrupt the man), the movie was a little flat.
The soundtrack. like the movie, was stunning as well. Unlike the movie, it doesn't really fall flat and I think it is with a few good reasons - two of them being Waits & Gayle.
The real reason it works? It is because you're not expecting it to. Gayle had never really ventured out of the country to adult contemporary crossover that of the late '70s. She certainly never sang songs like the stuff Waits had written - which he did for this movie.
In an odd way, Gayle's voice really fits for Waits' lyrics. I admittedly had prejudices against liking her because of her MOR stuff, but immediately I loved her on this disk (yes, I first owned it on vinyl). I'm sorry she never really did anything like this after the fact. Or I assume she did not. I never really followed her - before or after.
I am sure to make enemies with this, but I liken Waits to Dylan and Leonard Cohen: great writers, painful to listen to. I'd like to say Gayle made this more accessible, but as many people who never even knew it existed, the folks that followed these two artists were probably turned off by the very idea of the collaboration.
Waits does perform stuff on his own and a little of this is just instrumental which really does fit the tone of the movie and the town in which it takes place.
Highlights include the stuff Gayle is featured on, either by herself or dueting with Waits (let's face it, there is no harmonizing with the man): "Old Boyfriends", "Picking Up After You", "Is There Anyway Out of this Dream", "This One's From the Heart" and "Once Upon a Town".
For Waits purists, this probably isn't the disk for you. But I'm not one. "Pure" is hardly what anyone would use to describe me. And for what it's worth, this is still better than Scarlett Johansson singing an entire disk of Waits songs. I wish I were kidding on that last part, but it's out there."