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For some time now, I have decided to broaden my musical horizons. For too long, in fact, I've only been listening to Queen, and even though every song is always an emotion, and every time I hear "Bohemian Rhapsody" I always get goosebumps, I think it's right to open up more and more, discover new things, new sounds, open up to new perspectives.
At the moment, still staying within the Rock realm, I'm diving into The Who or Pink Floyd, while thanks to a friend, I'm opening up to new genres like Jazz or Electronica. On his advice as well, I’m exploring a bit of Onda Rock, the site that provides a real vision of Rock and everything surrounding it. While browsing this site, I came across an author whose name seemed very familiar: Tom Waits. I couldn't quite recall who he was, so I listened to what Onda Rock cites as a milestone: Swordfishtrombones.
Compared to everything I used to listen to, here we are in completely different music, which isn’t based on energy or guitars like in the classic Rock'n roll song, but rather relies on more meditative, relaxing, and very sweet atmospheres. In general, the album made a great impression on me, especially what Onda Rock defines as a voice "smoke and honey", which carries the mind and imagination. A very peculiar and beautiful voice, one that manages to be sweet and gritty, yet never boring or annoying. This was precisely what happened to me: while listening to an album, in fact, (perhaps due to the distrust of the first listen), I didn't feel that urge that drives me to keep listening to a CD.
A good album, on the other hand, should captivate the listener, make them soar in their imagination at times. Swordfishtrombones succeeds in this. Between Waits' unique blues-man voice, the mellifluous rhythms of the piano, and partly the brevity of the songs, I couldn’t even change a single song to "see how it would end". I'm sorry to keep citing Onda Rock, but here is what I think best defines Waits as an artist: "White blues-man, damned poet, the quintessential singer of the American Underground". Unfortunately, it makes me ponder the fact that a man who managed to write and create immense masterpieces, endowed with extraordinary vocal strength, could have fallen into the pit of "vices". Perhaps it is a prerogative of a famous man, who by putting together notes manages to make us dream and change our mood, or better yet put it into music.
Returning to the album, I don't think it's necessary to make a tedious list of each song, highlighting its pros or cons (which I didn’t find anyway), since being beautiful as a whole, the album doesn’t need it. With this, I certainly don't intend to diminish the honor that this CD would deserve by analyzing its songs, so much so that each single track is a single pearl. However, I believe that instead of the pearls, we should look at the necklace they form: a necklace that suits everyone a bit, even those who, like me, have only recently approached this artist.
In conclusion, this album is, in my opinion, the practical demonstration that a CD and the music it has recorded is immortal. In his songs, Waits talks about the streets of Los Angeles at night, his wife’s country, friends, people who have somehow left a mark on him, and he manages to make us perceive every single emotion, almost 25 years after the album’s release.
I don't believe I am a music critic, much less someone who understands a lot about music, in fact, I write because I would like to convey to you what an album has conveyed to me. And it is precisely by listening to these CDs that I realize what "Music" is, and how today we hear less and less of it.
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
01 Underground (02:01)
Rattle big black bones
in the danger zone
there's a rumblin' groan
down below
there's a big dark town
it's a place I've found
there's a world going on
Underground
they're alive, they're awake
while the rest of the world is asleep
below the mine shaft roads
it will all unfold
there's a world going on
Underground
all the roots hang down
swing from town to town
they are marching around
down under your boots
all the trucks unload
beyond the gopher holes
there's a world going on
Underground
04 Johnsburg, Illinois (01:33)
She's my
Only true love
She's all that I think of
Look here
In my wallet that's her.
She grew up
On a farm there
There's a place on my arm
Where I've written her name
Next to mine.
You see I just can't
Live without her
And I'm her only boy
She grew up
Outside McHenry
In Johnsburg, Illinois.
05 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six (04:33)
I plugged 16 shells from a thirty-ought-six
and a Black Crow snuck through
a hole in the sky
so I spent all my buttons on an
old pack mule
and I made me a ladder from
a pawn shop marimba
and I leaned it up against
a dandelion tree
And I filled me a sachel
full of old pig corn
and I beat me a billy
from an old French horn
and I kicked that mule
to the top of the tree
and I blew me a hole
'bout the size of a kickdrum
and I cut me a switch
from a long branch elbow
Chorus
I'm gonna whittle you into kindlin'
Black Crow 16 shells from a thirty-ought-six
whittle you into kindlin'
Black Crow 16 shells from a thirty-ought-six
Well I slept in the holler
of a dry creek bed
and I tore out the buckets
from a red Corvette, tore out the buckets from a red Corvette
Lionel and Dave and the Butcher made three
you got to meet me by the knuckles of the skinnybone tree
with the strings of a Washburn
stretched like a clothes line
you know me and that mule scrambled right through the hole
Repeat Chorus
Now I hold him prisoner
in a Washburn jail
that stapped on the back
of my old kick mule
strapped it on the back of my old kick mule
I bang on the strings just
to drive him crazy
I strum it loud just to rattle his cage
strum it loud just to rattle his cage
Repeat Chorus
07 In the Neighborhood (03:07)
In The Neighborhood
(Tom Waites: Swordfish Trombones)
Well the eggs chase the bacon round the frying pan
And the whining dog pigeons by the steeple bell rope
And the dogs tipped the garbage pails over last night
And there's always construction work bothering you
In the neighborhood, in the neighborhood, in the neighborhood
Well Friday's a funeral and Saturday's a bride
Seth's got a pistol on the registers side
And the goddamn delivery trucks they make too much noise
And we don't get our butter delivered no more
In the neighborhood, in the neighborhood, in the neighborhood
Well Big Mambo's kicking his old grey hound
And the kids can't get ice cream 'cause the market burned down
And the newspaper sleeping bags blow down the lane
And that goddamn flatbed's got me pinned in again
In the neighborhood, in the neighborhood, in the neighborhood
There's a couple Filipino girls giggling by the church
And the window is busted and the landlord ain't home
and Butch joined the army yeah that's where he's been
and the jackhammer's digging up the sidewalks again
In the neighborhood, in the neighborhood, in the neighborhood
In the neighborhood, in the neighborhood, in the neighborhood
10 Swordfishtrombone (03:08)
Well he came home from the war
with a party in his head
and modified Brougham DeVille
and a pair of legs that opened up
like butterfly wings
and a mad dog that wouldn't
sit still
he went and took up with a Salvation Ar
Band girl
who played dirty water
on a swordfishtrombone
he went to sleep at the bottom of
Tenkiller lake
and he said "gee, but it's
great to be home."
Well he came home from the war
with a party in his head
and an idea for a fireworks display
and he knew that he'd be ready with
a stainless steel machete
and a half a pint of Ballentine's
each day
and he holed up in room above a hardware store
cryin' nothing there but Hollywood tears
and he put a spell on some
poor little Crutchfield girl
and stayed like that for 27 years
Well he packed up all his
expectations he lit out for California
with a flyswatter banjo on his knee
with a lucky tiger in his angel hair
and benzedrine for getting there
they found him in a eucalyptus tree
lieutenant got him a canary bird
and shaked her head with every word
and Chesterfielded moonbeams in a song
and he got 20 years for lovin' her
from some Oklahoma governor
said everything this Doughboy
does is wrong
Now some say he's doing
the obituary mambo
and some say he's hanging on the wall
perhaps this yarn's the only thing
that holds this man together
some say he was never here at all
Some say they saw him down in
Birmingham, sleeping in a
boxcar going by
and if you think that you can tell a bigger tale
I swear to God you'd have to tell a lie...
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Other reviews
By R2061478
Tom Waits plays for himself, for the pure and simple joy of making music.
Anyone who has let their Unconscious sing or play deserves to be listened to in silence, not cut down by a gray and conceited critic.
By Contemplazione
From the first seconds of music I started bobbing my head and tapping my feet, and a half-smile somewhere between pleased and sardonic spread across my face!
If you come across this crazy and brilliant CD... STEAL IT!!!
