Tom Waits

“Swordfishtrombones” (Island)

Compare to: Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott

Swordfishtrombones” is pure audio literature. Personified by a cast as seedy and wretched as the characters of a Bukowski poem; strung together by a tempest of odd time signatures, jarring percussion and bizarre noise; and topped off by a narrator as much protagonist as antagonist – a gruff-voiced musical pioneer by the name of Tom Waits.

This 1983 landmark album saw the already unpredictable, charismatic piano balladeer trade in his booze-soaked piano ballads for a sound that still remains in a class of its own. The first in a loose trilogy that carried over to his next two records – 1985’s “Rain Dogs” and 1987’s “Franks Wild Years,” “Swordfishtrombones” was a blunt and unexpected introduction to the Tom Waits of the ’80s.

The album saw him moving away from his piano-driven lounge-act blues and finding a lo-fi sound characterized by booming percussion and gritty instrumentation that gave his already signature scowl an even dirtier, harsher sneer.

His lyrics, which may be his strongest suit, certainly got that reputation from this masterpiece album. The songs demonstrate his uncanny ability to paint a grimy, macabre world built around all-night tattoo parlors, liquor stores and burlesque clubs, each inhabited by sailors on shore leave, hustlers and thugs with luck as pretty as their surroundings.

His eloquent spin on the grim underworld gives it a poetic persona classier than it has ever known and a voice that will remain long after the sun has risen and pushed it back below the asphalt.

“Essential”