Rain Dogs

I'm one of those tiresome people who would probably give TW five stars for 45 minutes of farting in a bathtub. Nonetheless, this is a hell of a listening experience. Insanely good!

wtf. weird, like halloween music

Tom Waits is a maniac. He’s playing this old school, traditional style of music but almost nothing about it sounds old or traditional. I’m way into how weird this is and I really wanna dig hard into his catalog.

4.7 - Vignettes of New York life from the perspective of the burnouts, vagabonds and losers sung by Waits' gravelly voice over the clangy, moaning and squeaky acoustic instruments. A wonderfully broad swath of genres that envelope a grimy and expansive soundscape. It channels the dirtbag spirit of Bukowski with the unflinching eye of Steinbeck, performed in the trashcan of Oscar the Grouch.

An album from 1985 that sounds over 100 years old. Amazing

Now I know why people heat up albums and make lamp shades out of them.

our friend says there are only two kinds of tom waits songs: (1) it’s raining and i’m sad or (2) we’ve got to stop these monkeys and their fashioning of tin cups!

I never guessed Alice’s Wonderland had such a fiery dive bar.

Tom Waits: Patron saint of misfits, weirdos and lost souls everywhere. I can't think of another album that has more character, or one that's much better at evoking atmosphere and mood. I suspect this album confuses some people. That's a selling point as far as I'm concerned. If you want to stop reading here, I have one thing to say: This album is a masterpiece. It’s just a deeply, deeply cool album. Rain Dogs is the second in a trilogy of albums (along with Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years) Waits created in the 1980s which represented a sharp shift in his musical style. It’s maybe a challenging listen for some, but it’s really not that hard. You see, Waits is an excellent songwriter. He knows how to make melodic, affecting music. But he also likes to keep it interesting, and a central principle of his style is to take the familiar and make it ugly (“fuck it up” as I believe Robert Christgau put it). Waits created a style of music all his own, a bricolage of sounds and eras that takes you to another place. It’s like a detour through a dark, gritty world that has a thousand stories of hard luck cases and scoundrels. Waits also has some remarkable musicians working him, including the brilliant Mark Ribot on guitar. The use of percussion here is also second to none, with Waits incorporating multiple drummers and percussionists. I mean how many albums have you heard that make effective use of a marimba, parade drum, congas and a bowed saw? I haven’t even mentioned half the instruments that appear on this album. On paper it’s a kitchen sink approach, but Waits really makes it work, he brings it alive. The bruised cherry on top is of course Waits himself, with that famous raspy, theatrical vocal style. In the 80s this album was a thrilling antidote to the overly produced music of the time. Now it’s simply timeless. Fave Songs: Downtown Train, Jockey Full of Bourbon, Hang Down Your Head, Time, Diamonds and Gold, Clap Hands, Tango Till They're Sore, Big Black Mariah

"Rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy" - Tom Waits. Enuff Said.

The first "weird-period" Waits album I listened to. Still mostly unskippable, it's like being read Chandler in translation by a gypsy leprechaun. Remarkable work. (Man, I wish I could play guitar like Marc Ribot. What an absolute GUN.)

Tim Burton wrote this album about a immortal pirate who moves to New Orleans

Deep and wide and scary and charming.

WTF is this? Terrible... It sounds like drunk Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean trying to make a concept album...

You know how special it is to experience something *new* as you start to get older? How those experiences become more and more rare and you keep chugging along? When you get to experience something for the first time that accompanies actual surprise and delight? This is one of those times.

I like to listen to a Tom Waits song every now and then…. This was a lot. A difficult listen.

Never listened to this album before. Maybe heard one song on it (Downtown Train) prior to this. Wasn’t sure how I would fare staring at 19 of these tracks ahead… “Singapore” was a great surprise! Had no idea I would like it so much. Then “Clap Hands” proved to be surprisingly enjoyable. Great percussion. “Cemetery Polka” has incredible imagery and music. Really like “Hang Down Your Head” and “Rain Dogs.” “Midtown” feels like an amazing intermission. “Downtown Train” ls so much more meaningful than Rod Stewart’s remake. This album has surprises, twists and turns and is a real journey I’m glad to have made.

This album was weird and jarring! If I can give 0 stars, I would!

The best of his trilogy, and his second best album overall (to me, Mule Variations is his best, giving listeners the best of Tom Waits’ world) Rain Dogs is a heck of a work: a journey though the underbelly of the society, with a cast of characters that would be at once home in a Dickens story as in a film by Jordorowskjy. The use of a wide range of instruments here is astonishing but never not in service of the song. The whole album sounds at once timeless and completely new, which is often a sign of great art. Reading through some of the reviews, I was glad to see that people unfamiliar with Waits were giving him a chance and coming out the other side appreciating his mad genius. A consummate artist and one of the our great living musicians. Shout out to his wife Kathleen Breanna for giving him the push to create new and creative music not bound by convention. Favorite track: Downtown Train, Time

Simply brilliant. And the best proof of that brilliance is when you listen to the whole album on a loop around 5 times and it's still as exciting and bizzare. The range of sounds that fit in these songs is amazing: it's circus, it's blues, some random noise, it's all world's strangeness cramped together.

My mate, Peter, said he couldn't understand why Tom Waits stopped doing actual songs, and just devolved into "crashing rubbish bins around while screaming", not entirely unfair assessment. Swordfishtrombones was the beginning of that 'devolution', which continues, on Rain Dogs, which is my favourite Tom Waits record. It hits a kind of mid-point between the bar-room balladry of his early albums, with elements of the creepy circus, rubbish-bin-crashing production of his 90s albums. There are some absolute crackers songs on this record (Time, Downtown Train, Hang Down Your Head) that deserve their status as modern standards, along with more atmospheric grooves (Jockey Full of Bourbon, Tango Til Their' Sore), and occasional rocker (Big Black Mariah). It doesn't surprise time that Jockey and Tango ended up on the soundtrack of Down By Law; they fit the dissolute atmosphere of that film (also starring our hero, Mr Waits, as a dissolute loser).. I love Waits quote about production style "If I want a sound, I usually feel better if I've chased it and killed it, skinned it and cooked it." The wrongness of the sounds, the deliberately bad recording quality is, to my ears, charming, but I know not everyone thinks so. MVP on the album is Marc Robot, who is a guitar player who very distinctly plays 'wrong' a lot, but in a way that always catches my ear. In my youth, when friends had a particularly bad break up or some other life set-back, we would buy a bottle of Jamesons, and sit up to 4am commiserating. And this is the record I would play.

I want this man to be my Psychopomp, shoutout to Wristcutters!

Terrible. Silly even.

AI, make me an album of sea shanties, children's skipping songs, blues, jazz and folk songs. Here you go Thanks. Now make the singer a chain smoking ogre, but make it bizarrely awesome. Like this? Yeah. Now throw in a Rod Stewart cover version that isn't a cover version. This one? No, the other one. This one? That's the one. Perfect

Can't believe this is 80's production. Compliments to how authentic Waits is to his craft that he is not swayed by any passing aesthetic trend. He knows exactly who he is and he stays 100% true. Who is he you might ask? A man swooned by the romantic notions of the American down & outers, the ones 86'd from railroad bars, heartbroken outcasts, and generally an older aesthetic of beautiful souls that America has left behind. This beatnik noir is a chapter of his exploration of misunderstood rogues, lamenting their abandoned search for a 3rd or 4th second chance with one foot in the grave. All of this is set to his raspy poetry, well crafted prose laid out against percussive clangs, rootsy angular fretwork, and old barroom pianos-- tuning be damned. Every musician in lockstep like men possessed, each understanding the assignment. Because who, among musicians and artists, don't understand his sentiments? His songs of the marginalized population left out in the rain speak to anyone seeking for validation in a bygone last ditch effort, even if the writing is written clearly on the wall of the bathroom stall. While the bouncer waits on the other side to reintroduce you to the gutter, accept this last bit of sympathy in the form of a raised glass by Waits, for whatever it is worth.

I fucking love Tom Waits. This album is so, so good. He's a tremendous storyteller. His lyrics are poetry, a lot of it gritty, but then there's tender songs like Hang Down Your Head. "Hush, a wild violet, hush, a band of gold / Hush, you're in a story I heard somebody told / Tear the promise from my heart, tear my heart today / You have found another, oh baby, I must go away" I mean, come on. No one does it like Tom Waits.

The album as carnival barker, or the mutterings of a drunk lying in a Bowery gutter, or the album as a circus of freaks or the underdeck of a pirate ship, or a one man band falling down a flight of stairs, or a lounge singer sitting at the bar after his set, listening to the crowd, or the a in the New York basement hearing the pipes creak and bang. In a good way.

Incredible. This album is gritty and unique. The subject matter and the very style of the music itself match perfectly. Even without the lyrics, this album would still sound like the dejected of New York.

Sounds like nothing else, wonderful and complicated

Didn't realize he was in seven psychopaths.

Amazing. I don't know what to call it, except marvelous and artistic. A defined yet diverse style which is very spoken for.

Kind of offbeat and odd, I loved this album. Not something I'd listen to every day but I feel good knowing Mr. Waits made such a kooky record.

Don't get the hype, generally unenjoyable with a few OK bits. His voice is grating and the songs sound like a circus. Goes on for too long too.

The original hipster. Rasps out poetic novellas while not-particularly-interesting music plays in the background. (The bluesier tunes are more tolerable than the carnival variety). I suppose it’s all about the lyrics. In which case, just write a book. Pretentious for sure. Annoying listen thanks to his voice, in my opinion. I refuse to pretend to enjoy this just to seem cool or intellectual.

wtf did i just listen to... i absolutely love this

Absolutely fucking brilliant, Tom Waits' best. My go-to album when I need to hear something good.

Unique combination of roughness and beauty: a deeply satisfying album.

Another classic from Tom Waits. Rain Dogs comes to finish what Swordfishtrombones started: a crazy troubadour screaming stories from dwarfs, sailors, and prostitutes in a really hoarse voice. Great album. I cannot get enough from it!

This album gives me the same feeling I get walking through a cold drizzly rain in the seedier part of a major city at 2am, Oddly something I've done way too much. Dirty, stark, worn out and darkly beautiful 9/10

And the Tom Waits glazing continues… This was the first Waits album I ever heard and it’s on my top 5 favourite albums of all time. Everything you could possibly wants from a Waits album is here and then some - gorgeous ballads like Time, huge stadium rock choruses like Downtown Train, unsettling slinking oddities like Clap Hands and just some fun and freaky shit like Singapore and Cemetery Polka. Probably his most diverse album, and even though there are 19 tracks on here they’re rarely more than a couple of minutes so it absolutely whizzes by, lurching from genre to genre like a ghost train led by a drunken vagabond

Tom Waits at its best.

TW's masterpiece, and an utter embarrassment of riches. The genius is in the blending and balancing all his various personae and tendencies (and many different modes of instrumentation) and creating songs that are a bit more accessible (which is how he transcends Beefheart) for having clear structures and being more self-contained than his more exploratory work. High literary quality to the snapshots of life on the edges. The growl and deadpan and edgy heartbreak of the vocals are best managed for overall effectiveness. First few cuts set the right tone that just keeps getting richer and richer. "Tango Till They're Sore" is the first full-on gem. Then the middle sequence of "Hang Down Your Head" and "Time" and "Rain Dogs" gets this into classic territory; the performances (which can be overly performative) deliver real pathos. "9th & Hennepin" is his most poetic cut – no small claim for this artist – and "Gun Street Girl" is among his most memorable. "Walking Spanish" is strong, too. And rounding out things are the authentically excellent "Blind Love" and "Downtown Train" and "Anywhere I Lay My Head" – they seem almost effortless in their perfection. This is a powerful summation of all his previous work and a compendium-foundation for all the innovations to come. A stunning achievement and easily one of the best records of the '80s.

I thought I hated Tom Waits but i guuuueeeeess nooooooot

One of my favourite albums of all time. Marc Ribot's solo in Jockey Full of Bourbon is one of the best solos of all time, especially with Keith Richards chugging away behind him. Funny to see that the ratings are almost all 1 or 5 with nothing in between. I think this is what artists should aspire to, and I think Tom Waits would appreciate this. 5 for me!

Perfect weather for my favorite Tom Waits album. Rain Dogs is Tom Waits at his creative/weird peak (along with Swordfishtrombone). It might seem like this is a bunch of goofing around, but like an abstract painting by Picasso -with colors -, every moment here is meticulously arranged into a brilliant mirage of sound. It evokes emotion (maybe emotion you don't always want to feel) - but I love where it takes me mentally. Tom Waits is a musical genius, and his vocal range and composing ability are almost alien. Changing his vocal style entirely and musical genre on every song, but somehow still weaving a perfect tapestry like an eclectic patch quilt. The appreciation and respect I have for this guy, because of this period (83-85), is right up there with Neil Young (72-79), Bowie (71-77) and Bjork (95-01) during their creative peaks. There's nothing else like it and there never will be.

This is WILD. How have I not listened to Tom Waits yet?! Overall this is what I LOOOOVE about American music - detailed storytelling, varied styles, honest and raw songwriting, and generally unapologetic storytelling. It feels like the audio equivalent of seeing someone switch costumes and characters in a deeply interesting way. 5/5 stars

Picture it. All of the deadbeats, dirtbags, hustlers, scoundrels, down-and-outs of New York City have fallen down a plughole into the fires of Hell. They try and crawl their way back up, circling the drain, gathering grime. The ghost of a Puerto Rican mistress with a wooden leg… Napoleon weeping in a carnival saloon… a crumbling beauty with tattooed tears… all of them are our Rain Dogs. Their plight is related- sometimes with scorn, sometimes with sympathy- by the voice of our ringmaster, the Devil himself, Mr Tom Waits. Soaked in bourbon, grime and kerosene, his voice might be an acquired taste for some, but I can’t imagine any other performing these songs. Waits’ storytelling in “Rain Dogs” is among the most captivating I’ve ever heard, with astounding lyricism and some fascinating turns of phrase. Every line is a painting, but here are some of my favourites… “Steam, steam, a hundred bad dreams Going up to Harlem with a pistol in his jeans” “Outside another yellow moon has punched a hole in the nighttime” “You’re east of East St. Louis And the wind is making speeches And the rain sounds like a round of applause” On the page they’re intriguing, but with the music they really come alive. I’ve known few other albums which diverge so much stylistically, yet retain a crystal-clear singular vision. The slow, menacing crawl of “Clap Hands”; the demented cabaret of “Rain Dogs”; the Springsteen-esque “Hang Down Your Head” and “Downtown Train”; the fiddling country ballad “Blind Love”. All of them are absolutely wonderful and there’s not a single track I dislike, but if pushed for the best of the best, I’d single out “Clap Hands”, “Jockey Full Of Bourbon”, “Time”, “Union Square”, “Downtown Train”, “Anywhere I Lay My Head” as the all-time standouts. Marc Ribot should also be singled out for fantastic and unpredictable contributions on guitar, and Keith Richards for fantastic and predictable ones. When I first heard Rain Dogs some years ago, I had no idea what to make of it. Then the more I listened over the next few months, the more it fell into place until it became an all-time favourite. It’s a rough and slippery ride into the gutter, but stick with it… there’s beauty in these ghosts.

Dear reader, when I saw that my album today was "Rain Dogs" by Mystery Men star Tom Waits, I was less than enthused. I tried to listen to a Tom Waits song a few years ago ("Chelsea Hotel?" Is that a Tom Waits song? An album? Was it on some sort of Christmas song list? Hmm, I should Google that), and I hated it. His gravelly voice was an immediate turnoff for me. But I listened to this album anyway, and I gotta say, I was a fan. I really love what Waits was doing with this album: a concept album about the "urban dispossessed" of New York City. From my adolescence on, New York City has been a major tourist destination, a major city that even the most suburban family can enjoy and feel safe in. But before it became that city, it was dirty, grimy, and dangerous. I remember seeing New York City in movies like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Big, and Home Alone 2, and the place looked depressing and grim. And that's exactly what Waits captures here. The music is raw and the lyrics are weird, but everything is incredibly well executed. The natural sounds that Waits uses really transport you to the New York that he knew and experienced. If anything, this feels like a New York City version of a folk album. "Hang Down Your Head," "Time," "Midtown", and "Rain Dogs" were all outstanding. I grew up listening to Rod Stewart's version of "Downtown Train," and I was ecstatic to see that Tom Waits's original version was on this album, and his gravelly voice really gave a desperate feel to the song, a complete shift in tone from Stewart's cover (fun fact: my grandfather always said that Rod Stewart sounded like he got his voice from a bottle of Drano). It's safe to say that I loved this album, and my opinion on Tom Waits has completely shifted (okay, so "Chelsea Hotel" is Leonard Cohen. What the hell Tom Waits song did I listen to?).

This is the second album of the trilogy (along with Swordfish Trombones and Franks Wild Years) that mark the start of the second phase of his career. It's when the influence of his wife Kathleen Brennan starts to be felt. He switches from his old blues/jazzbo style to incorporate influences from everywhere in a much more experimental sound. Tom has been my favorite artist since I first heard Heart of Saturday Night back in the early 70s. This album is quite possibly my favorite (although that varies from day to day). There isn't a bad song on it. I really believe that when the history of 20th century music is written years from now that Tom will be recognized as one of the seminal figures. So many artists are indebted to him for the way he opened the doors to try new things.

This is Bone Machine but written by a (slightly) younger man in his prime. Fantastic. When I first heard this in approx 1985, (my Dad played it to me) I didn't understand it at all, it was completely unintelligible to me and I hated it. 10 years later it was one of my favourite albums. Clap Hands - yep, a big round of applause from me.

SIMPLE THE BEST

That voice!

Unique set of songs from a guy that defies genre by going somewhere between rock and modern sea shanty

Local man possessed by the spirit of creole jazz, more at 11. The more I reflect on this record, the more I really like it. Tom Waits is an insane man, and it translates heavily into his music. Love the marimba and the unusual... everything about this album. Favorite tracks: "Jockey Full of Bourbon", "Big Black Mariah", "Union Square"

I saw the word "experimental" on the Wikipedia page and got a bit of a preconceived notion about the album, but you know what? I really really enjoyed this. The melodies, the delivery, the instrumental arrangements. SO CLOSE to a 5 for me, but I'll definitely re-visit and check out more of Tom Waits!

I don't like his voice. the music is kinds jarring as well. It is very dark. Base licks and guitar riffs are nice. Big Black Mariah is good-Very blues rock. Rain Dogs (the song) might have won me over. Over all a tough album to listen to, I did enjoy a couple of songs. Singapore is probably the most interesting song, not saying I like it, just am compelled by the playfulness in the music, and the darkness in the lyrics/vocals.

Vocals killed any interest in revisiting this album. The instrumentals were somewhat decent, but that vocal work was awful for a majority of the album.

Rain Dogs? More like Warthogs Why does he sound like Pumbaa from The Lion King! 2 ⭐️

This album tows the line between genuine brilliance and utter absurdity (the bad kind). And I'm torn between giving this the 1 it probably deserves and a 5 for the sheer fun of it. I'll go with a 2. The singer's gravelly voice is kind of out of place in an 80s context, but it occasionally works, particularly in the great mid-album one-two-punch of Hang Down Your Head / Time. If I were forced to pick which other vocalists sound like this, I'd go with Ram-era McCartney (think Monkberry Moon Delight) and Randy "It's a Jungle Out There" Newman. But honestly, the voice is so distractingly out of left field that there's little time for comparison. The instrumentation is a whole different can of worms, with the only common element being a jangly old-blues guitar, reminiscent of pre-WWII acoustic blues charts. Everything else is thrown together pretty oddly, including free-jazz brass playing, a drum player that really isn't trying (example track: Downtown Train), some light organs and synths, and incredibly straightforward chords that make one reminisce about simpler times. Then one meanders through this album's tracklist and correctly wonders, "what the heck?" Songs like 9th & Hennepin, Midtown, Singapore, Blind Love, and Tango Till They're Sore - among others - seem like purely novelty tracks. Except here they make up the entire album. What a strange idea. 2/5 Key tracks: Time, Hang Down Your Head, Clap Hands

Holy fuck no thank you

WTF is this? Terrible... It sounds like drunk Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean trying to make a concept album. I just don’t get the love for Tom Waits… 1⭐️

Rain Dogs was straight-up miserable to get through. I know Tom Waits has a cult following and people swear by this album, but honestly? I have no idea why. It sounds like a drunk pirate muttering nonsense over trash can percussion and broken accordions. The whole thing feels like it’s trying way too hard to be weird for the sake of being weird. There’s no flow, no real melody to hang onto — just a mess of clanking sounds and gravelly rambling that made me feel like I was losing my mind. I kept hoping it would turn a corner or give me something to latch onto, but it never happened. Every track just made me more annoyed that I was still listening.

Suena como Tim burton

Day 78 - January 7th "Mom? Can we have Danny Elfman?" "No. We have Danny Elfman at home." Danny Elfman at home: 1/5 (this is one of the few albums I could not finish)

1.5

This album to me sounds like a joke piece from a terrible kids cartoon. Basically, I envision an episode of some D-Tier kids cartoon with a plot where a lame pirate villain decides to try and make a music album to get money from album sales to further a dastardly plot. But the album is so abominably terrible that his plan falls through and the heroes win by default due to how awful it is. This, to me, is that album. I cannot express enough how much I find this, and \"Swordfishtrombones\", the other Tom Waits album on here, to be so utterly abysmal that I cannot put it properly into words. The only possible reason I can even imagine these projects being on a \"Must Listen To\" List is a similar reason why Tommy Wiseau's The Room is so ironically beloved - it's so meager, so horrendous, so unbelievably detestable that it's almost impressive in how bad it is. Unfortunately this album, and the other Tom Waits one here, don't even have the status of being \"So Bad It's Good\" like The Room is. It's just so horrible that it's honestly extraordinary it *doesn't* come back around to be at least a little ironically enjoyable, or be something to gawk at in a fun way. Much like the other Tom Waits album here, this was one of the worst things I have ever had the displeasure of listening to. And I'm already mentally preparing for some other Tom Waits nightmare to stroll it's way to my daily listen here. Because if this list shows anything, it shows it's very rigid in it's taste of 90% bland classic rock, 8% the occasional token \"anything else\" to seem more well-rounded than it actually is, and finally the 2% of the \"so awful, you write four paragraphs to try and grapple with how it's even here, and to even try to begin to review this trash\".

I know that this IS a Tom waits album but so much of it sounds like a caricature of Tom waits. It’s Tom waits at his most Tom waitsy (this is not a good thing to be)

Not quite getting the Tom Waits hype. Starts carnivalish and pushes my ability to listen with an open mind because of all the distracting sounds. Cemetery Polka pretty much sums it it... its POLKA, FFS.

Not Tom Waits again, please. Just heard a couple songs and it hurt my ears. This guy is just annoying. Although way better than Bone Machine, it's still terrible.

Due to traveling, i didn't have time to listen to this one today, but this is my favorite Tom Waits album, so I can go ahead and confidently give it 5 stars. He gets everything right on this one.

RAIN DOGSSSS. absolutely impeccable. a 9 but closer to a 10...

Classic Tom Waits. Not my top favourite but him but I don’t think those are in the project (Blue Valentine and Frank’s Wild Years) and this is close enough.

I mean you know how I feel about Tom Waits. And this has the Cemetery Polka!

This album is a fever dream. I love it! The title track was standout for me, although I also loved Singapore and Clap Hands.

This is such cool Album!

Tom Waits can be overrated at times but this is a genius album

I actually really like this album - what a fun, funky, weird, creepy vibe.

Perfect

I started off thinking this was all vaguely ridiculous but by about half way through I was thinking 'I'm a Rain Dog too'. Always great to hear something that you've written off for years without ever really giving it a try and be pleasantly surprised. Lesson learned not to prejudge based on what you think something is rather than what it actually is. I have a lot of Tom Waits to catch up on.

As my dad says, there are some Tom Waits tracks that just sound like he's reciting poetry while banging pots in the background. This, however, is everything that makes him great - the lyrics are evocative and create characters and stories that are so intriguing. The guitar playing is great and adds to the atmosphere and storytelling without being overly flashy. Really great album

Not much more to say about the twisted and conflicted demon that is Tom Waits. Back-alley Shakespeare takes us on a journey to the darkest depths of NYC nightlife and sleaze, to the score of proficient worldly influence, multigenre demonstrations and really zany instrument choices. Rain Dogs is peak Tom Waits, not all his albums give off this vibe. But his work on this one remains iconic and prolific.

Incredibly creative and evocative.

Wow wow wow wow wow. Get on board and go for a ride!

Surrealist art has always been controversial. When it comes to something as universal as music, even more so. Regardless, said weirdness is what makes me love Rain Dogs. It is a bizarre piece of surrealist poetry, where Tom shows us around a fascinating and strange world, alongside some of the most unique instrumentation of any album I've ever heard. It's lyrics are instantly memorable, his voice perfectly fitting, it's melodies hilarious and fun. An absolute masterpiece.

Masterpiece.

Tom Waits touches on every genre and influence but simultaneously creates a genre all his own. His voice, while always touched by that gravel and grit ranges from raucous to tender and everything in between. Highlights for me are Clap Hands, Big Black Mariah, Time, Rain Dogs, and Hang Down Your Head.

Waits is the main and this is among his finest!

Someone has a hard on for Tom Waits. There's too many of his albums on this list. Same thing with David Bowie, same thing with Dylan, same thing with Pearl Jam, etc. Not everyone has a stiffie for Tom Waits, and when there are too many albums on the list for being good, then none of them are good. The thought is 'uhh, not another Leonard Cohen album...' After the third shitty Tom Waits album, nobody has any patience for Tom Waits (pun intended). But this is the outlier, this is the album that everyone should listen to. Look, 1001, you can afford to retool, to be a little selective. There's plenty of other worthy music that should be on this list and five Tom Waits album is too many. Just, please keep this one.

This is the 123rd album I’m rating. Adding to my Playlist - Singapore, Clap Hands, Cemetery Polka, Jockey Full of Bourbon, Tango till they're Sore, Big Black Mariah, Diamonds & Gold, Hang Down Your Head, Time, Rain Dogs, Midtown, Gun Street Girl, Union Square, Blind Love, Walking Spanish, Downtown Train, and Anywhere I Lay my Head. Not Adding to my Playlist - 9th & Hennepin. All in all I liked 18/19 songs. Tom Waits is great except for the spoken word parts because that is just awful.

Love this, good ol’ Tom Waits. Vaudeville, carnivalesque, weird and wonderful. Voice like a leather belt soaked in rye whisky for a year then thrown onto a gravel road and run over by a line of big rig trucks. This is great, with some really great songs.

This was perfect for this rainy may day. 5

I have always loved this album

This is what I’m doing this project for. Absolutely completely different, utterly unique, rich, dirty, a whole visual world you can picture created through music and sound. Reminds me of Nick Cave. Absolutely fantastic.

Rain Dogs might be as near to accessible as Tom Waits gets, which is to say, not very. It sits in the middle of an acclaimed trilogy, between swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years. We’re in the sleazy underbelly again, Waits’ natural home, rubbing shoulders with the human flotsam in a thousand corners of New York. Musically he makes raids on many genres mangled them all nearly beyond recognition. The opener Singapore is a kind of demented sea shanty, complete with wind and rain atmospherics on the outro. Time is a stripped back early hours highlight. Extra credit must be given for the line, “All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes,” on the spoken 9th and Hennepin. Downtown Train is a great track though in many ways it’s the most conventional in the album; it could almost be a Springsteen song. This is core Waits. Here’s the long form lyrics listing oddly named characters doing incomprehensible and often unspeakable things with or to each other under the influence of oceans of bourbon. You won’t come away whistling tunes, though you might begin to feel that you’ve led a rather sheltered life. “I’ve seen it all”, he intones, and listening to this album it’s hard to doubt it. Fun fact: this album features Keith Richards on several tracks, most audibly on the folk tinged Blind Love, my favourite track in the album. Chris Spedding guests on the opener.

So much Tom Waits. First impression on this one is Tom Waits is compiling audio into an album because he wants to. There doesn't seem to be any chasing a buck or algorithm. This one is an audio experience, like some form of gutter blues grime opera. I gave this around 3 listens. I don't have any complaints, and enjoyed the ride each song took me on.

let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair!

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. I f****** love, Tom waits.

Bizarre, mesmerizing, enthralling

fucking weirdo album for weirdos, fucking little freak album; 5 stars

Sheer perfection. It's an experience listening to this. The songs, the sound, the band all come together to make an outstanding album of songs that tell stories. I can understand how some folk got tired of the jazzy schtick of the later Warners albums (I know that I did). This was the start of something new, what a transformation. Everyone should own a copy.