#swordfishtrombones

© Anton Corbijn

swordfishtrombones

I'd sell your heart to the junk-man baby for a buck, for a buck If you're looking for someone To pull you out of that ditch You're out of luck, you're out of luck The ship is sinking, the ship is sinking, the ship is sinking There's a leak, there's a leak In the boiler room The poor, the lame, the blind Who are the ones left in charge? Killers, thieves and Lawyers God's away, God's away, God's away On Business, business

In a list published in their April 1989 issue, Spin magazine named Swordfishtrombones their second greatest album of all time, behind James Brown's Sex Machine, which is the kind of eclecticism I was always able to get behind.

On this day—September 1st, 1983—Swordfishtrombones, the eighth studio album by Tom Waits, was released. The first of Walts’ albums to be self-produced, it is considered the first in a loose trilogy of records that includes Rain Dogs (1985) and Franks Wild Years (1987). The album marks a major stylistic change for Waits where he largely abandoned piano-based songs for a fuller sound, often with more exotic instruments and more idiosyncratic song structures and styles. While the album didn’t sell particularly well and only spawned one single—“In the Neighborhood”—which also didn’t sell particularly well, it is often cited as one of the best albums of the era.

To honor this metamorphic period, Waits’ spectacular middle-period albums – released on Island Records between 1983 and 1993 – have been newly remastered from the original tapes for reissue on vinyl and CD via Island/UMe, personally overseen by Waits and Brennan.  Swordfishtrombones (1983), its sprawling and superb sequel, Rain Dogs (1985), and the trilogy-completing, tragi-comic stage musical, Franks Wild Years (1987), kick off the series today with their new vinyl releases.

Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones