Tom Waits Rain Dogs

In 1985, two years after wowing the world (okay, the critics) and hitting the top of most “Best Albums of 1983” lists with his booming, clanking compendium of avant-guard compositions Swordfishtrombones, Tom Waits released a meatier, mightier album in the form of Rain Dogs. Filler-free nineteen-song CDs are rare beasts, and Rain Dogs, despite being superb value for money (currently 15 bucks at The Warehouse) is one of Waits’ finest albums (surpassed only recently by 2002’s magnificent Alice).

Musically rich and challenging, Rain Dogs’ greater emphasis on song structure makes Swordfishtrombones’ songs sound like mere sketches in comparison. Whilst much of the album is experimental in nature – relying on exotic percussion, esoteric keyboards and brass instruments – and there are also a handful of songs which employ more conventional instrumentation and are therefore quite accessible to a larger audience. Accessible, in fact, that one wonders why they weren’t hits (well, one was for another artist, but more on that later…).

As an album, Rain Dogs defies categorisation. Waits draws from a melange of sounds: crazy calypso (Singapore) rhumba (Jockey Full Of Bourbon), piano-based jazz (Tango Till They’re Sore) blues-rock (Big Black Mariah), guitar pop (Hang Down Your Head), Depression-era folk (Gun Street Girl), bourbon-soaked country-and-western (Blind Love, which features some guitar and caterwauling from the as of this moment fresh from hospital Keith Richards), and New Orleans funeral music (Anywhere I Lay My Head). Yet Waits proves that musical innovation doesn’t necessarily have to come at the expense of great songwriting; Rain Dogs may be all over the place stylistically, but it is extraordinary consistent in quality.

Waits is one of popular music’s foremost lyricists, and Rain Dogs is testament to his craft. Most of the lyrics here are more surrealist montages and expressionistic character sketches than the relatively coherent narratives of Waits’ bar-room ballads of the 1970s. Spiced with quirky word-play and Noirish city-speak, the songs are as delightful for the words as for the adventurous arrangements, even though Tom’s singularly coarse vocals take a while getting used to.

Thanks to Rod Stewart’s reading of the song, Downtown Train is the album’s – and undoubtedly Waits’ – best known song. Yet whereas Stewart’s version is a slick, radio-ready power ballad, the original - despite its breezy tune and immaculate surf-rock guitar licks – is a desperate, heartsick entreaty to the insensitive female residents of Brooklyn. It also contains some of Waits’ very best lyrics:

You wave your hand and they scatter like crows
They have nothing that will ever capture your heart
They're just thorns without the rose
Be careful of them in the dark
Oh, if I was the one you chose to be your only one
Oh baby can't you hear me now, can't you hear me now
Will I see you tonight on a downtown train?
Every night it's just the same, you leave me lonely now

Rain Dogs was this reviewer’s introduction to Tom Waits. You should make it yours. The cover art is quite neat, too…

This review was published, with minor alterations, in Craccum, Issue 11, 2006.