Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones [180g Remastered Black Vinyl]

Description

Tom Waits reshaped his artistic identity with Swordfishtrombones, the first album to break from his earlier jazz lounge sound and dive into a world of fractured rhythms, raw textures, and unusual arrangements. Recorded in 1982 and released the following year, the album finds Waits embracing experimental percussion, scrapyard instrumentation, and characters who feel pulled from midnight streets and flickering neon corners. It marks the moment where his music moved from smoky bars into something stranger and unmistakably his own.

Tracks like Underground, Shore Leave, 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six, and In the Neighborhood showcase this shift clearly, blending marimbas, pump organs, and junkyard percussion with Waits’s gravel-edged storytelling. The album balances rattling energy with eerie stillness, built around arrangements that set the direction for the trilogy that followed. Despite its experimental nature, the writing stays deeply human, filled with dark humor, longing, and vivid imagery.

This 180g remastered black vinyl edition highlights the album’s unconventional sonic palette with greater clarity and weight. Pressed on heavyweight vinyl and housed in a standard jacket with a printed inner sleeve, this edition emphasizes the depth of the remaster and gives the album’s jagged textures and quieter passages a fuller sense of space.

• Format: 180g Black Vinyl LP
• Standout tracks: Underground, Shore Leave, 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six, In the Neighborhood
• Pressing details: 180g black vinyl, remastered audio, standard jacket, printed inner sleeve
• Genre/style: Alternative, Experimental Rock, Art Rock, Avant Blues, Singer-Songwriter
• UPC: 602448898425

Swordfishtrombones remains a bold reinvention, capturing Tom Waits at the moment he fully embraced the experimental sound that would define his later work.

* The Spotify track list may not exactly represent the tracks and audio of this LP edition.

Track List:

Side A:

1. Underground
2. Shore Leave
3. Dave The Butcher (Instrumental)
4. Johnsburg, Illinois
5. 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six
6. Town With No Cheer
7. In The Neighborhood

Side B:

1. Just Another Sucker On The Vine (Instrumental)
2. Frank’s Wild Years
3. Swordfishtrombone
4. Down, Down, Down
5. Soldier’s Things
6. Gin Soaked Boy
7. Trouble’s Braids
8. Rainbirds (Instrumental)