What’s (Re)New?: Island Waits No More…
Like many of my ilk, (i.e. music-obsessed dads), I celebrated this year’s Father’s Day at my go-to record store. It was a particularly giving day when the bins offered much to my liking, much more than my budget would allow. I had an uncomfortable 12” brick under my arm as I headed toward the register, but stopped real quick at the RARE VINYL crates. As my fingers peeled back layers of poly-sleeved LPs I found that which I could not turn down: A gold-stamped promotional copy of Tom Waits’ 1983 masterpiece, Swordfishtrombones. Price tag? $50. Consequence? Half of my stack was put back. But, I was elated to find one of Waits’ Island albums, which had not yet been reissued and were therefore not easy to find for cheap.
It figures that the Island stuff would surface now.
Tom Waits’ extensive and remarkable discography is no stranger at this point to receiving the reissue treatment. Closing Time recently celebrated its 50th year this year with a double-LP release following the 2018 remasters of his Elektra output. In 2017, his ANTI- albums were remastered as well, with 20th anniversary editions of Alice and Blood Money being issued in 2022. And now it looks like his Island years are finally being put back into circulation, just in time for Swordfishtrombones to blow out 40 candles. Honestly, it’s about time. I believe I share the same opinion as many that the Island years produced Waits’ most inventive work. This point in his career is not only noteworthy for his own evolution as an artist, but for introducing his wife, Kathleen Brennan, as a collaborator. Their creative partnership would last up to Waits’ last album, 2011’s Bad As Me.
Guess I’m buying Swordfishtrombones again. And Bone Machine will be available on vinyl for the first time in the U.S.
Tom Waits, New York, 1985 Credit: Anton Corbijn
All info and links were provided by Big Mouth Publicity.
TOM WAITS
ENTIRE METAMORPHIC AND GROUNDBREAKING MID-PERIOD ISLAND RECORDS STUDIO CATALOGUE TO BE REISSUED
NEWLY REMASTERED FROM ORIGINAL TAPES AND PREPPED FOR RELEASE ON VINYL, CD AND DIGITAL FOR FIRST TIME
REISSUE SERIES PERSONALLY OVERSEEN BY TOM WAITS AND KATHLEEN BRENNAN
PIVOTAL ALBUMS 'SWORDFISHTROMBONES', 'RAIN DOGS' AND 'FRANKS WILD YEARS' OUT 1ST SEPTEMBER
FOLLOWED BY 'BONE MACHINE' AND 'THE BLACK RIDER' ON 6TH OCTOBER
SWORDFISHTROMBONES 40TH ANNIVERSARY
ALL REMASTERED ALBUMS AVAILABLE TO STREAM TODAY
Personally overseen by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, Waits' spectacular middle-period albums–released on Island Records between 1983 and 1993—have been newly remastered from the original tapes and will be reissued on vinyl and CD this autumn via Island/UMe. Waits’ transformative creative breakthrough, 'Swordfishtrombones' (1983), its sprawling and superb sequel, 'Rain Dogs' (1985), and the trilogy-completing, tragi-comic stage musical, 'Franks Wild Years' (1987), will kick off the series on 1st September, 40 years to the day that 'Swordfishtrombones' was released into the wild, ushering in a new and critically acclaimed musical era for Waits and his longtime songwriting and production partner, Brennan. The epic song-cycle, 'Bone Machine' (1992) and the under-appreciated Waits (with Robert Wilson and William S. Burroughs) musical fable, 'The Black Rider' (1993), will follow on 6th October. September, incredibly, marks the 40th anniversary of 'Swordfishtrombones' and the 30th of 'The Black Rider'.
Ahead of their physical releases, all of the albums are available to stream today featuring the newly-remastered audio, allowing fans to hear how these landmark recordings now sound better and more vivid than ever.
STREAM THE ALBUMS HERE
In addition to streaming and download, each album will be released on CD and in two vinyl options: 180-gram black vinyl and a limited edition colour variant that will be available exclusively via TomWaits.com and UDiscover Music. 'Swordfishtrombones' will be pressed on canary, 'Rain Dogs' on opaque sky blue, 'Franks Wild Years' on opaque gold, 'The Black Rider' on opaque apple and 'Bone Machine' on translucent milky vinyl.
PRE-ORDER THE ALBUMS HERE
All albums were mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering under the guidance of Waits’ longtime audio engineer, Karl Derfler. 'Swordfishtrombones' was sourced from the original EQ’ed ½” production master tapes while 'Rain Dogs', 'Franks Wild Years', 'Bone Machine' and 'The Black Rider' were sourced from the original ½” flat master tapes. Bellman meticulously transferred the tapes and then remastered the audio in high resolution 192 kHz/24-bit. The lacquers for all titles were cut by AlexAbrash at AA Mastering. The new vinyl editions will come with specially made labels featuring photos of Waits from each era in addition to artwork and packaging that has been painstakingly recreated to replicate the original LPs, which have been out of print since their initial release. Surprisingly, 'The Black Rider' and 'Bone Machine' were never released on vinyl outside of Europe and will be making their vinyl debut in most of the world.
These critically acclaimed works are a monument to an artist’s ability to break through into new creative territory. Waits went from ‘70’s-era “bluesy, boozy” wordsmith and melodist with seven albums behind him to sound sculptor, miner of the subconscious, abstract orchestrator, sonic cubist—while retaining his innate lyricism, melodic invention, humanity. A rough analogy: Picasso switching from exquisite literal depictions to pouring his brain and id out onto canvas. Waits was still painting, in other words, but the frames were made of blood and bone and feathers and old carburetors. Working with experimental composer Francis Thumm, and taking inspiration from the music of found-object composer Harry Partch—plus Waits’ friend, Captain Beefheart—the renowned singer-songwriter reinvented his sound, album by album.
As he put it in a 1983 interview: “I tried to listen to the noise in my head and invent some junkyard orchestral deviation—a mutant apparatus to drive this noise into a wreck collection.” Not that Waits’ early albums were devoid of artistic progression. There were the piano-based jazz-folk ballads of his remarkable debut, 'Closing Time' (just remastered for its 50th anniversary), the beat/jazzy/smokey flavour of 'Nighthawks at the Diner', the piano-bass-sax-drums sagas of the landmark, 'Small Change', the experimental tone poem, “Burma Shave,” on 'Foreign Affairs', the grit and grunge of the stripped-down 'Heartattack And Vine'... All this would stand alone as a great body of work if the man had never written another note.
“I tried to listen to the noise in my head and invent some junkyard orchestral deviation—a mutant apparatus to drive this noise into a wreck collection.”
But with 'Swordfishtrombones' and the albums that followed, Waits shifted gears, or rather, deliberately ground them. New York Times music critic Stephen Holden wrote: “Miles away from the (music) he used in the ‘70s to evoke the wrong side of the tracks, his evolved style is an abrasive, lurching honky-tonk that at its most adventurous suggests a fusion of Captain Beefheart's Dadaist extensions of the delta blues with the Kurt Weill of 'Threepenny Opera.'”
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Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
