Tom Waits / Island albums reissued

The five albums Tom Waits made for Island Records, released between 1983 and 1993, have been remastered and are being prepared for reissue in the autumn of this year.

Waits was on a new label and followed a new musical path for the albums Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), Franks Wild Years (1987), Bone Machine (1992) and The Black Rider (1993). The first three formed a loose trilogy and were some of the most acclaimed records of Waits’ career and exhibited a more abstract, kaleidoscopic, experimental approach to writing and recording. In the early ’90s the material got darker, denser and before becoming an album of songs, 1993’s The Black Rider was actually a play where Waits collaborated with William S. Burroughs and director Robert Wilson (Waits would work with Wilson again on the Alice play of 1992 although it took a decade for the album to see the light of day).

This was a fertile period, and as ever, Tom Waits’ excellent songs offered material to other performers. To that end, ‘Soldier’s Things’ from Swordfishtrombones was covered by Paul Young on his 1985 album The Secret of Association, Rod Stewart had success with ‘Downtown Train’ (from Rain Dogs) in 1989 and much later various interpretations of ‘Way Down in the Hole’ from Franks Wild Years (including a version by The Neville Brothers) was used as the theme tune to HBO’s acclaimed drama series The Wire.

These five studio albums have all been newly remastered for the first time from the original analogue master tapes and personally overseen by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. They are available on 180g black vinyl and CD. They have been mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering under the guidance of Waits’ longtime audio engineer, Karl Derfler. All the albums are available on 180g black vinyl and CD.

This isn’t quite everything from the Island Records era; there were other long-players issued, namely live album Big Time (1988) and the excellent soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s 1991 film Night On Earth (issued in 1992). Presumably we’ll get these at some point.

Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years are all reissued on 8 September 2023 on CD and 22 September on vinyl via UMR/Island. Bone Machine and The Black Rider follow on 6 October.

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