Tom Waits – Blood Money (Remastered) (2002/2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:16 minutes | 880 MB | Genre: Pop Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph
“Blood Money” is based on the socio/political play “Woyzeck”, originally written by a young German poet Georg Buchner as a spare, cinematic piece in 1837 and inspired by the true story of a German soldier who was driven mad by bizarre army medical experiments and infidelity, which led him to murder his lover. Waits, along with wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan, wrote songs for an avant-garde production of “Woyzeck” directed by Robert Wilson, which premiered in November 2000 at the Betty Nansen Theater in Copenhagen and went on to win Denmark’s version of the Tony for Best Musical. The album careens from the brutal to the tender with assaulting rhythms and romantic melodies.
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Tom Waits – Bad As Me (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:33 minutes | 944 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph
Bad As Me is the first studio recording in over seven years from influential singer/songwriter Tom Waits. The exquisite album triumphs as one of his finest performances in a long and established career. Waits’ unparalleled songwriting, raspy vocals and masterful arrangements are on full display. Included is the beautiful ballad “Last Leaf,” a bluesy “Talking at the Same Time,” a gospel “Satisfied,” and more. This high resolution recording is the perfect way to experience one of music’s most important songwriters.
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Tom Waits – Alice (Remastered) (2002/2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:23 minutes | 997 MB | Genre: Pop Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph
Alice, once dubbed “the lost Tom Waits masterpiece” by the press, was originally done as an avant-garde opera directed by Robert Wilson for Hamburg’s Thalia Theater in the winter of 1992. “Alice” was based loosely on Lewis Carroll’s obsession with young Alice Liddell, the girl who inspired his Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. Working with wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan, they wrote fifteen songs for the Wilson opera in the summer of 1992. The Thalia performed “Alice” for eighteen months, with an eclectic orchestra of Waits’ design.
A devastatingly beautiful atmosphere made of sorrow and reverie, insanity and resignation, rises like a mist in Alice. It’s a lyrical melancholia, a feeling that creeps in on the arms of Stroh violins and unabashed poetry. These are songs to fall into, and sometimes, to keep falling. There are fragile, haunted musings, and laments, mad ruminations, and tales of unrequited love and anthems from beyond the grave. “Alice,” said Waits, “is adult songs for children, or children’s songs for adults. It’s a maelstrom or fever-dream, a tone poem, with torch songs and waltzes…an odyssey in dream logic and nonsense.”
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Tom Waits – The Black Rider (2023 Remaster) (1993/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 55:31 minutes | 2,17 GB | Genre: Blues Rock, Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Island Records (The Island Def Jam Music Group / Universal Music)
The Black Rider is the twelfth studio album by Tom Waits, released in 1993 on Island Records, featuring studio versions of songs Waits wrote for the play The Black Rider, directed by Robert Wilson and co-written by William S. Burroughs. The play is based on the German folktale Der Freischütz by Johann August Apel, which had previously been made into an opera by Carl Maria von Weber. The play premiered on March 31, 1990, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany. Its world English-language premiere occurred in 1998 at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival.
Waits would later collaborate with Wilson on the plays Alice (1992) and Woyzeck (2000), the music to which were released on the albums Alice and Blood Money, respectively.
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Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones (2023 Remaster) (1983/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 41:43 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Jazz Rock, Blues Rock, Experimental Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Island Records (The Island Def Jam Music Group / Universal Music)
The first album on the Island Records label and the first album produced by Tom himself. Swordfishtrombones was a new milestone in Waits’ musical career. On this album, he departs from the usual piano accompanied by a string orchestra and replaces it with a variety of exotic instruments, nicknamed by him “junkyard orchestra”, that is, “dump orchestra”. The lyrics become more abstract. Jazz and blues with elements of folk and rock fade into the background, Tom’s new genre is defined as experimental rock, since his new music is not like any of the rock genres in its purest form. Swordfishtrombones has been recognized by many critics as one of Waits’ best albums, for example, Spin magazine ranked it second in the list of the “25 Greatest Albums of all time”
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Tom Waits – Rain Dogs (2023 Remaster) (1985/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 53:54 minutes | 1,84 GB | Genre: Experimental Rock, Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Island Records (The Island Def Jam Music Group / Universal Music)
Rain Dogs is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1985 on Island Records. A loose concept album about “the urban dispossessed” of New York City, Rain Dogs is generally considered the middle album of a trilogy that includes Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years.
The album, which includes appearances by guitarists Keith Richards and Marc Ribot, is noted for its broad spectrum of musical styles and genres, described by Arion Berger in a 2002 review in Rolling Stone as merging “outsider influences – socialist decadence by way of Kurt Weill, pre-rock integrity from old dirty blues, the elegiac melancholy of New Orleans funeral – into a singularly idiosyncratic American style.”
The album peaked at number 29 on the UK charts and number 188 on the US Billboard Top 200. In 1989, it was ranked number 21 on the Rolling Stone list of the “100 greatest albums of the 1980s.” In 2012, the album was ranked number 399 on the magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, and at number 357 in 2020.
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Tom Waits – Franks Wild Years (2023 Remaster) (1987/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 56:39 minutes | 2,06 GB | Genre: Blues Rock, Jazz Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Island Records (The Island Def Jam Music Group / Universal Music)
Franks Wild Years is the tenth studio album by Tom Waits, released 1987 on Island Records. Subtitled “Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts”, the album contains songs written by Waits and collaborators (mainly his wife, Kathleen Brennan) for a play of the same name. The shared title of the album and the play is an iteration of “Frank’s Wild Years”, a song from Waits’ 1983 album Swordfishtrombones.
The play had its world premiere at the Briar St. Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, on June 22, 1986, performed by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
Various versions of “Way Down in the Hole” were used as the theme music for the HBO series The Wire, including Waits’ original version for the second season. The songs “Temptation” and “Cold Cold Ground” were used in Jean-Claude Lauzon’s film Léolo (1992). “Cold Cold Ground” was also used in the series Homicide: Life on the Street. “Temptation” and “Straight to the Top (Vegas)” featured in the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), and “Innocent When You Dream” featured in the film Smoke (1995). The song “If I Have to Go” was used in the play, but released only in 2006 on Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. The theme from “If I Have to Go” was used under the title “Rat’s Theme” in the documentary Streetwise as early as 1984. “Yesterday Is Here” appears in “The Night Shift”, the second episode of the 2023 mystery drama series Poker Face.
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Tom Waits – Bone Machine (2023 Remaster) (1992/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 53:36 minutes | 2,11 GB | Genre: Progressive Rock, Blues Rock, Jazz Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Island Records (The Island Def Jam Music Group / Universal Music)
The abnormal has become the norm for Tom Waits, so, once again, Bone Machine is laden with odd timbres, archaic acoustics, and raw vocals. This time, however, Waits has built his songs around a Harry Partch-inspired fascination with primitive percussion. With a crew of Northern California musicians along to add spare adornments, Waits fashions pretty, sentimental tunes (“A Little Rain,” Whistle Down the Wind”) and hellish stampedes of clanging metal and hoarse shouting (“Earth Died Screaming,” “Let Me Get Up on It,” the latter the 53-second distillation of Bone Machine quintessence-just Waits distorted bellowing and banging. Bone Machine is both appalling and appealing. There are elements to this album that seem designed to drive away the faint of heart, and then there are melodies that melt in your hand. –Steve Stolder
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Tom Waits – Blood Money (Anniversary Edition) (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:15 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph
“Blood Money” is based on the socio-political play “Woyzeck,” originally written by the young German poet Georg Buchner in 1837 as a spare, cinematic piece inspired by the true story of a German soldier driven mad by bizarre army medical experiments and infidelity, which led him to murder his lover.
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Tom Waits – Alice (Anniversary Edition) (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:36 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph
“Alice” is a ghostly, atmospheric chamber piece dedicated to Charles Dodgson’s obsessive, forbidden love for Alice Liddell, for whom Alice in Wonderland was created. Piano, pump organ, cello, theremin and straw fiddle are the main instruments in these melancholy and comic reflections on death, longing and the random meanness of life. Tom Waits adapts the classic blues-jazz balladry of his early career in the eponymous song “Alice” and the seasick pump organ and string ode to the wall that separated East and West Germany, “Lost in the Harbor.”
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Tom Waits – Heartattack And Vine (1980/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 44:29 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © Anti/Epitaph
The final Asylum album from 1980 couldn’t be more different than Waits’ ’73 debut – his voice sounds like the marvellous ruin that we know and love today, the ballads remain (On the Nickel is beautiful and even Springsteen took a crack at Jersey Girl) but it’s the twisted warped blues of the title track that points the way to the extraordinary world of Swordfishtrombones.
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