Review: Tom Waits' Hold On

The Tom Waits song 'Hold On' is taken from the 1999 album 'Mule Variations'. Although nowhere near as experimental or wilfully obtuse as some of his other work, both before and after, the song shows just what a good melody Waits is capable of writing. The song actually comes across as optimistic and reasonably sunny, but it also has a darker side.

Music

While 'Hold On' bears some resemblance to his other work, there are not too many songs throughout Tom Waits' discography which sound so poppy and upbeat, albeit in a gnarled, husky way as this one. The gentle strumming of guitars to a rhythm which sound slightly off-beat but still grooves in a scratchy, barn-floor type way, add to its sense of summer melancholy, California sunshine fading on a dream. This is a long way from the young Tom Waits' 'Closing Time' piano ballads, or the full-on whisky-soaked melancholia of some of his 1970s work. It is even further away from the baroque surrealism of much of his work since then as well. However, it is perhaps closer in many ways to those early songs in its sound, and certainly seems to reflect a simpler approach to constructing sounds, although Waits' way of adding texture to his sound is rarely straightforward.

Lyrics

The lyrics of the song reflect some of the obsessions and preoccupations from earlier Tom Waits albums. There are the repeated images of Americana, reinforced by a story of escape which is heavily touched by sadness and experience, with even a tone of warning. On occasion, its story of a girl tempted by the wrong side of the tracks recalls a much earlier one of Tom Waits' songs, 'Burma Shave', which shares 'Hold On's girl on the run in a car theme. There are also some touches of genuine poetry. The protagonist of the song has "charcoal eyes and Monroe hips" and as she leaves Monte Rio "the moon was gold and her hair like wind". The song concludes with the image of what seems to be a homeless lady dancing in the cold, perhaps the protagonist years later, swaying to the memories in her head. This image perhaps provides the kernel of sadness at the song's core.

Video

The video complements the song's dreamlike narrative of images. Tom Waits plucks out the chords of the song, the film awkward and old-looking, like blurred holiday snaps set moving, while more direct images lifted straight from the lyrics intersperse the mix of colour and sepia film. In its tone, dreamlike surrealism and occasional use of sepia, it occasionally recalls the video made to support 'In the Neighbourhood', taken from 'Swordfishtrombones'.