Swordfishtrombones

Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones

Swordfishtrombones
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Music CD Cover

Artist: Tom Waits
Brand: WAITS,TOM
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 1990-06-15
Music Label: Island
Soundtracks:
  1. Underground
  2. Shore Leave
  3. Dave The Butcher
  4. Johnsburg, Illinois
  5. 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six
  6. Town With No Cheer
  7. In The Neighborhood
  8. Just Another Sucker On The Vine
  9. Frank's Wild Years
  10. Swordfishtrombone
  11. Down, Down, Down
  12. Soldier's Things
  13. Gin Soaked Boy
  14. Trouble's Braids
  15. Rainbirds

Free Music Notes for Swordfishtrombones

Free Music Review: Amazing and Uncompromizing
Hit: 5 Stars

By the early 1980's, Tom Waits had perfected his style. His beatnik-barroom persona was clearly defined, his throaty voice familiar to a very dependable, if not especially large, fan base. This is the point at which most popular musicians reach an apex, enter "legendary" status, and release a string of albums that often simply pastiche their earlier successes. But Tom Waits is not an ordinary "popular musician."

Consequently, he re-invented himself in 1983 with Swordfishtrombones. Choosing to jettison his record label and produce the new album himself, he also left behind the combination of strings and piano that had backed so many of his previous songs, replacing them with scratchy electric guitars (often plucked), bizarre organs, glass harmonicas, and most of all, a huge variety of drums. The result is a CD full of arresting soundscapes in which his voice, always distinctive, becomes an instrument in its own right.

The lyrics are different also. Though he is still most certainly singing about life's unfortunates, the typical references to hookers, bars, and closing time are replaced with mystifying, often nightmareish story-lyrics in which the listener more often gets the gist, rather than the details, of the circumstances described. Though "Frank's Wild Years" is a spoken song and might at first seem similar to the spoken-word masterpieces of, say, Nighthawks at the Diner, this song is not about your typical drunkard but rather a psychopath who, unable to stand his suburban existance, burns down his house and drives away laughing.

In fact, discontent with the city is prevalent on the songs here; there's the unflatteringly depicted seaport in "Shore Leave," a "Town With No Cheer," and the suburban nightmare of "In The Neighborhood," which sounds like a Fourth-of-July anthem with a hangover. Of course, Waits himself would eventually move to the country, a move reflected in 1993's Bone Machine.

All in all, this disc is unbeatable. Waits's voice, sounding amazingly young and cocky compared with his recent releases, is in top form. His poetry, though considerably more obscure than what he has written afterward -- sometimes to the point of complete mystification -- is evocative and startling, and as always, sounds great when sung with Tom's unusual phrasing. And the music itself, ranging from the brutally percussive opener "Underground" to the wild blues-rock of "16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six," to the acerbic organ on "Frank's Wild Years," and the obligatory gorgeous ballads "Johnsburg, Illinois" and "Soldiers Things," is among the best Waits ever composed.

Swordfishtrombones, which was both an important career move for Waits and an album on which every song matters and is well placed, should not be missed by anyone interested in some of the best American popular music of all time.

Swordfishtrombones Poster

No Description Available.
Genre: Popular Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 11-JUL-1990

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