Swordfishtrombones - Tom Waits

Rating: 6/10
Sound Quality: 320 kb/s
Format: Mp3
Record Label: Island
Year Released: 1983
Album Covers: Included
Pass: radiodada
Links: rapidshare

About the Album
Swordfishtrombones is an album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1983 (see 1983 in music). It was the first album that Waits produced himself and is marked as such by a sense of artistic freedom that would increasingly characterize his later work. Stylistically different from his previous LPs, Swordfishtrombones moves away from the piano and string orchestra arrangements of the late seventies replacing them instead with unusual instrumentation and a somewhat more abstract songwriting approach. Swordfishtrombones peaked at #164 on Billboard's Pop Albums and Billboard 200 albums chart.In 1989, Spin Magazine named Swordfishtrombones the second greatest album of all time."Town with No Cheer" was covered by actress Scarlett Johansson on her album of Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head."Soldier's Things" was covered by singer Angela McCluskey and her band Tryptich on their album, "Curio".

About Tom Waits

Thomas Alan Waits (born 7 December 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and as a supporting actor in films, including The Fisher King, Coffee & Cigarettes, Down by Law, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Wristcutters: A Love Story, and Short Cuts. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One from the Heart.

Lyrically, Waits' songs contain atmospheric portrayals of bizarre, seedy characters and places, although he has also shown a penchant for more conventional ballads. He has a cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters despite having little radio or music video support. His songs are best-known to the general public in the form of cover versions by more visible artists—for example, "Jersey Girl," performed by Bruce Springsteen; "Downtown Train" and "Tom Traubert's Blues" performed by Rod Stewart; and "Ol' '55," performed by the Eagles. Although Waits' albums have met with mixed commercial success in his native United States, they have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries. He has been nominated for a number of major music awards and has won Grammy Awards for two albums, Bone Machine and Mule Variations.

Waits currently lives in Sonoma County, California with his wife and their three children.