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Tom Waits: Swordfishtrombones |
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Genre: Unclassifiable |
Dates: 1983 |
No American songwriter has as directly linked his work to the Beat Generation writers (Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg) as has Waits. Unfortunately, during the first decade of his career, the link was too direct; aside from a handful of gems, his lyrics and music seemed more imitative than original. On this exceedingly weird and wonderful 1983 album, Waits finally came into his own. The music—which features such alien instruments as bass marimba, metal auglongs, brake, parade and African drums, bell plates, harmonium, bagpipes, bells, glass harmonica—harks back to Delta blues, Brecht-Weill musicals, Captain Beefheart, and the carnival. The lyrics capture a small town gone to a very specific hell, a small town which hides a teeming underground, festering violence, bad marriages, war-torn lovers, and much more. These lines from the title song say it much more succinctly than I can: "Now some say he's doing the obituary mambo/And some day he's hanging on the wall/Perhaps this yarn's the only thing/That holds this man together/Some say he was never here at all/Some say they saw him down in Birmingham/Sleeping in a boxcar going by/And if you think that you can tell a bigger tale/I swear to God you'd have to tell a lie."
Playlist:
1. Underground
2. Shore Leave
3. Dave The Butcher - (TRUE instrumental)
4.
5. 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six
6. Town With No Cheer
7. In The Neighborhood
8. Just Another Sucker On The Vine - (TRUE instrumental)
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 - (TRUE instrumental)