Tom Waits – ‘Swordfishtrombones’
Ever find yourself in one of those rare snaps when music suddenly seems slightly boring? You know, those painful few days where there is nothing new under the sun in the world of song, and you’re strangely irritated by pop sentiments that you’ve loved for years. Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones is the antidote to that dull snap. It’s a terror attack on banality—a bewildering journey underground where you can shelter for a while with ‘the other’.
Reality can be harsh and sometimes the growl of a forest monster proclaiming, “There’s a world going on underground,” is everything you want to hear. It’s a beacon for the disenfranchised – which it turns out is pretty much the normal disposition of the modern hybridised human race. Once you venture into that darkness, the whirlwind of comforting curiosities never lets up, and in doing so, it never lets the gaudy claw of punitive reality even scratch the surface of your escapism.
Swordfishtrombones follows Waits’ axe from Elektra-Asylum Records for failing to fit any notion of commerciality in his work. Clearly, he wanted to double-down and takes things even further here, cramming in a world of wonders untold. As he said of his songwriting mantra approaching the album: “You can take James White and the Blacks, and Elmer Bernstein and Leadbelly – folks that could never be on the bill together – and […] they could be on the bill together in you. You take your dad’s army uniform and your mom’s Easter hat and your brother’s motorcycle and your sister’s purse and stitch them all together and try to make something meaningful out of it.”
This tessellation of influences might sound like a broadcast from a different dimension, but that only really exposes how one-track typical pop music is for the most part. All Waits does is simply invite pop to approach culture at large with open arms. He brings an array of humble melodies to the neglected parriahs of art. With that in mind, you get waltzing songs that seem to serenade the suburbs with ‘In the Neighbourhood’, extoll the dark tale of a dog hating arsonist with ‘Frank’s Wild Years’, and offer a bit of straightforward blues with ‘Gin Soaked Boy’.
Prior to making the Swordfishtrombones, Waits confessed to his long-term producer, Bones Howe, that he had begun writing songs and asking himself, “will Bones like it?” Bones replied, “I don’t want to be the reason that an artist can’t create. Concluding: “We shook hands and that was it. It was a great ride.” Although Howe’s work on his previous records was magnificent and Waits’ mellowed tones are eternally beautiful, clearly, liberating himself from these for Swordfishtrombones loosened the lid on a jar of creative madness.
The album is full of counterpoint; he welcomes Frank Sinatra into the same song as Thelonious Monk with Leonaro Carrington scribbling away lyrics in the corner, knowing that they either end up fighting, f—king or both. It’s an orgy of influences where a clown protagonist might suddenly shoot the rockabilly guitarist and the bagpipes player might marry a mole. These clashes and coalesces create a world untold that you’ll be more than happy to sink into for a while to slip away from sanity.
If “there’s a world going on underground” doesn’t hit you like an assegai of wonder then the record might not be for you, and you’re not alone – I’m sure Waits would admit that himself – but that doesn’t mean the exploration of Swordfishtrombones is a selfish one from a place of creative boredom. Quite the opposite, it is an album that caringly extends a loving hand and says ‘I have bravely waded into a world of weirdness, you can now safely join me’. If that come hither sounds like your cup of tea, then welcome to Wonderland.
