Swordfishtrombones (2023 Remaster) Tom Waits

• 1Underground01:58
• 2Shore Leave04:14
• 3Dave The Butcher (Instrumental)02:15
• 4Johnsburg, Illinois01:32
• 516 Shells From A 30.604:30
• 6Town With No Cheer04:22
• 7In The Neighbourhood03:04
• 8Just Another Sucker On The Vine (Instrumental)01:42
• 9Frank's Wild Years01:50
• 10Swordfishtrombone03:00
• 11Down, Down, Down02:10
• 12Soldier's Things03:15
• 13Gin Soaked Boy02:20
• 14Trouble's Braids01:18
• 15Rainbirds (Instrumental)03:14
• Total Runtime40:44

Info for Swordfishtrombones (2023 Remaster)

1983 masterpiece "Swordfishtrombones" is the eighth studio album by singer and songwriter Tom Waits, released in 1983 on Island Records. It was the first album that Waits produced himself. Stylistically different from his previous albums, Swordfishtrombones moves away from conventional piano-based songwriting towards unusual instrumentation and a somewhat more abstract and experimental rock approach.

Recorded in August 1982. Though Tom Waits had spent most of the '70s establishing himself as one of America's most distinctive singer-songwriters, SWORDFISHTROMBONES found him reinventing himself and creating one of the most original sounds in popular music. Leaving behind his Kerouac-influenced lyrics and lounge-lizard piano-bar stylings for an unprecedented eclecticism that merged Brecht-Weill artsong, Captain Beefheart-style avant blues, Harry Partch-inspired junkyard percussion, along with a healthy dose of everything else but the kitchen sink.

All this sonic exoticism would be for naught where it not accompanied by equally striking, arch songwriting. SWORDFISHTROMBONES moves from the Ken Nordine-style recitative of "Frank's Wild Years" and the demented Delta blues of "Gin Soaked Boy" to the marimba-laced shaggy-dog tale "Shore Leave" and the crazed, Loony Tunes instrumental "Dave the Butcher."

The blazed a trail that Waits (and countless imitators) would follow fruitfully for years to come, and remains one of the most impressive recordings not just of Waits's career, but of anyone's.

"Between the release of Heartattack and Vine in 1980 and Swordfishtrombones in 1983, Tom Waits got rid of his manager, his producer, and his record company. And he drastically altered a musical approach that had become as dependable as it was unexciting. Swordfishtrombones has none of the strings and much less of the piano work that Waits' previous albums had employed; instead, the dominant sounds on the record were low-pitched horns, bass instruments, and percussion, set in spare, close-miked arrangements (most of them by Waits) that sometimes were better described as "soundscapes." Lyrically, Waits' tales of the drunken and the lovelorn have been replaced by surreal accounts of people who burned down their homes and of Australian towns bypassed by the railroad -- a world (not just a neighborhood) of misfits now have his attention. The music can be primitive, moving to odd time signatures, while Waits alternately howls and wheezes in his gravelly bass voice. He seems to have moved on from Hoagy Carmichael and Louis Armstrong to Kurt Weill and Howlin' Wolf (as impersonated by Captain Beefheart). Waits seems to have had trouble interesting a record label in the album, which was cut 13 months before it was released, but when it appeared, rock critics predictably raved: after all, it sounded weird and it didn't have a chance of selling. Actually, it did make the bottom of the best-seller charts, like most of Waits' albums, and now that he was with a label based in Europe, even charted there. Artistically, Swordfishtrombones marked an evolution of which Waits had not seemed capable (though there were hints of this sound on his last two Asylum albums), and in career terms it reinvented him." (William Ruhlmann, AMG)

Tom Waits, vocals (1:1–2, 1:4–7, 2:2–7), chair (1:2), Hammond B-3 organ (1:3), piano (1:4, 2:5, 2:8), harmonium (1:6, 2:1), synthesizer (1:6), freedom bell (1:6) Victor Feldman, bass marimba (1:1–2), marimba (1:2, 2:3), shaker (1:2), bass drum with rice (1:2), bass boo bams (1:3), Brake drum (1:5), bell plate (1:5), snare (1:5, 2:4), Hammond B-3 organ (1:7), snare drum (1:7), bells (1:7), conga (2:3), bass drum (2:3), Dabuki drum (2:3), tambourine (2:4), African talking drum (2:7)
Larry Taylor, acoustic bass (1:1–2, 1:5, 1:7, 2:2, 2:4, 2:6–7), electric bass (2:3)
Randy Aldcroft, baritone horn (1:1, 1:7), trombone (1:2)
Stephen Taylor Arvizu Hodges, drums (1:1–2, 1:5, 2:4, 2:6), parade drum (1:7), cymbals (1:7), parade bass drum (2:7), glass harmonica (2:8)
Fred Tackett, electric guitar (1:1, 1:2, 1:5, 2:6), banjo (1:2)
Francis Thumm, metal aunglongs (1:2), glass harmonica (2:8)
Greg Cohen, bass (1:4), acoustic bass (2:3, 2:5, 2:8)
Joe Romano, trombone (1:5), trumpet (2:1)
Anthony Clark Stewart, bagpipes (1:6)
Clark Spangler, synthesizer program (1:6)
Bill Reichenbach Jr., trombone (1:7)
Dick Hyde, trombone (1:7)
Ronnie Barron, Hammond organ (2:2)
Eric Bikales, organ (2:4)
Carlos Guitarlos, electric guitar (2:4)
Richard Gibbs, glass harmonica (2:8)

Digitally remastered

In the 1970s, Tom Waits combined a lyrical focus on desperate, low-life characters with a persona that seemed to embody the same lifestyle, which he sang about in a raspy, gravelly voice. From the '80s on, his work became increasingly theatrical as he moved into acting and composing. Growing up in Southern California, Waits attracted the attention of manager Herb Cohen, who also handled Frank Zappa, and was signed by him at the beginning of the 1970s, resulting in the material later released as The Early Years and The Early Years, Vol. 2. His formal recording debut came with Closing Time (1973) on Asylum Records, an album that contained "Ol' 55," which was covered by labelmates the Eagles for their On the Border album. Waits attracted critical acclaim and a cult audience for his subsequent albums, The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), the two-LP live set Nighthawks at the Diner (1975), Small Change (1976), Foreign Affairs (1977), Blue Valentine (1978), and Heart Attack and Vine (1980). His music and persona proved highly cinematic, and, starting in 1978, he launched parallel careers as an actor and as a composer of movie music. He wrote songs for and appeared in Paradise Alley (1978), wrote the title song for On the Nickel (1980), and was hired by director Francis Coppola to write the music for One from the Heart (1982), which earned him an Academy Award nomination. While working on that project, Waits met and married playwright Kathleen Brennan, with whom he later collaborated.

Moving to Island Records, Waits made Swordfishtrombones (1983), which found him experimenting with horns and percussion and using unusual recording techniques. The same year, he appeared in Coppola's Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, and, in 1984, he appeared in the director's The Cotton Club. In 1985, he released Rain Dogs. In 1986, he appeared in Down by Law and made his theatrical debut with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre in Frank's Wild Years, a musical play he had written with Brennan. An album based on the play was released in 1987, the same year Waits appeared in the films Candy Mountain and Ironweed. In 1988, he released a film and soundtrack album depicting one of his concerts, Big Time. In 1989, he appeared in the films Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale, Cold Feet, and Wait Until Spring. His work for the theater continued in 1990 when Waits partnered with opera director Robert Wilson and beat novelist William Burroughs and staged The Black Rider in Hamburg, Germany. In 1991, he appeared in the films Queens' Logic, The Fisher King, and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. In 1992, he scored the film Night on Earth; released the album Bone Machine, which won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album; appeared in the film Bram Stoker's Dracula; and returned to Hamburg for the staging of his second collaboration with Robert Wilson, Alice. The Black Rider was documented on CD in 1993, the same year Waits appeared in the film Short Cuts.

A long absence from recording resulted in the 1998 release of Beautiful Maladies, a retrospective of his work for Island. In 1999, Waits finally returned with a new album, Mule Variations. The record was a critical success, winning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk album, and was also his first for the independent Epitaph Records' Anti subsidiary. A small tour followed, but Waits jumped right back into the studio and began working on not one but two new albums. By the time he emerged in the spring of 2002, both Alice and Blood Money were released on Anti Records. Blood Money consisted of the songs from the third Wilson/Waits collaboration that was staged in Denmark in 2000 and won Best Drama of the Year. After limited touring in support of these two endeavors, Waits returned to the recording studio and issued Real Gone in 2004. The album marked a large departure for him in that it contained no keyboards at all, focusing only on stringed and rhythm instruments. Glitter and Doom Live appeared in 2009. Waits didn't release another studio album of new material until 2011, when he issued Bad as Me on Anti in the Fall. He uncharacteristically issued a track listing two months in advance of the release, and the pre-release title track as a digital single. He also took the unusual step of releasing a video in which he allowed bits of all the album's songs to play while he scolded bloggers and peer-to-peer sites for invading his privacy. (All Music.com)

This album contains no booklet.