Swordfishtrombones is an album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1983. It was the first album that Waits produced himself and is marked as such by a sense of artistic freedom that would increasingly characterize his later work. Stylistically different from his previous LPs, Swordfishtrombones moves away from the piano and string orchestra arrangements of the late seventies replacing them instead with unusual instrumentation and a somewhat more abstract songwriting approach.