Alex Harvey

Song Noir examines the formative first decade of Tom Waits' career, when he lived, wrote, and recorded nine albums in Los Angeles; from his soft, folk-inflected debut, Closing Time (1973), to the abrasive, surreal Swordfishtrombones (1983). Starting his songwriting career in the '70s, Waits absorbed LA's wealth of cultural influences. Combining the spoken idioms of writers like Kerouac and Bukowski...