Tom Waits: Swordfishtrombones (180g, remastered) [ISLAND]

Why you'll love it

Swordfishtrombones is where Tom Waits threw out the barroom piano and built a whole new sound from marimbas, bagpipes and junkyard percussion.

This edition

• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Pressed in Canada

About the album

Tom Waits spent the seventies as the poet laureate of the late-night bar stool. Then, for his first Island album, and the first he produced himself, he kicked over the piano stool and started banging on anything he could find: marimbas, pump organ, bagpipes, brake drums.

The results are gloriously odd and often heartbreaking. "Underground" clanks like a dwarf work song, "16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six" stomps and hollers, "In the Neighborhood" is a wonky brass-band hymn, "Johnsburg, Illinois" is a tiny, tender love letter to his wife Kathleen Brennan, and "Frank's Wild Years" is spoken-word noir at its best.

The Guardian called this run of records ones of "startling originality and playfulness," and it kicked off the loose trilogy with Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years. If you only know the ballads, start here.

Also at Kops: more Tom Waits on vinyl · browse Singer-Songwriter

Tracklist

Listen

On Island (cat# B0037074-01), a reissue of the 1983 album.