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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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.)

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

Terrible. Silly even.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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 janitor 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.

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.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1001 ALBUMS- # 80 A poetic cavalcade of off kilter cabaret jazz-fused blues rock, as only the gravelly Waits could execute to such entertaining charm. His ninth album, Rain Dogs is widely regarded as one of Tom Waits’ best, how it blends songwriting, theatricality, grit, and experimental sound. He mixes found/percussive instruments (brake drums, marimbas, unusual rhythms) with piano, accordion, horns, guitars, etc. The textures are rough, raw, chipped, but also very detailed. Lacking a defined genre; there’s blues, jazz, a lot of Americana filtered through Waits’ own carnival‑freak‑show sensibility. Songs might sound like cabaret numbers, mournful ballads, crazy polkas, or street‑corner shanties. 🎧 Classic Track: Singapore 🎧 Deep Cut Gem: Time 🎧 Personal Favorite: Clap Your Hands 🎧 Memorable Standout: Gun Street Girl The album is in many ways a portrait of misfits, drifters, people on the margins. Waits writes about displacement, alienation, being lost (emotionally, socially, geographically). The album’s title “Rain Dogs” is a metaphor; dogs in the rain that can’t follow their scent home, implying loss of bearings. Themes of urban decay, late nights, broken dreams, survival. The characters are often broken, or tired, or wounded, but they endure. There’s humor, too – dark, strange and ironic, while some of the songs are more wistful or tender (“Time”, “Downtown Train”) contrasted with the weird, punk‑cabaret, street‑raw ones. Letting the listener feel both beauty and ugliness.  🖼️ Album Artwork: No that isn’t Waits canoodling! The atmosphere Waits creates is immersive, he doesn’t just sing; he builds worlds — alleys, bars, train terminals, made up of sound. There is contrast throughout; because the album flips between rough, disordered tracks and quieter, more stripped‑down moments, it feels dynamic, unpredictable. Tom Waits’ voice here is more character than just instrument. It’s weathered, theatrical, expressive. It conveys more than lyrics alone. Pushing boundaries, avoiding getting stale or just repeating himself, Rain Dogs feels like an artist taking full ownership of his weirdness and crafting a signature sound.

Verkligen en favorit! Alla dessa genrer, alla dessa "instrument", allt sammanhållet av Waits groove. Jag tänker att om Harlem, New York 1980 skulle klämmas in i Auguststrasse, Berlin 1920 så skulle det låta så här. Smutsigt, men bubblande av liv.

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

Tom Waits at its best.

I thought I hated Tom Waits but i guuuueeeeess nooooooot

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

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!

The lounge singer goes to the carnival…so I know this is the crown jewel in the catalog but it’s not my favourite. I lean more lounge than circus. Still love him. Mule Variations will always have top pickings.

My last Tom Waits album. He's been my favorite new discovery from this project. I've gone through many of his albums by now, with plans to go through all of them eventually, but I left Rain Dogs unheard until now. I don't think this album is as strong as Bone Machine or Swordfishtrombone, but I enjoyed it regardless. The second half of the album isn't as strong as the first, even if it has "Downtown Train," so the second half drags and hurts the album at the end of the day. Rain Dogs fits perfectly in Waits' discography: his early blues from the seventies, with the experimental rock music in the eighties and later. "Time" is so bluesy that it sounds like it could be off his first album. "Downtown Train" is quintessential rock. In typical Waits fashion, he experiments in other genres. "Clap Hands" is an extremely catchy folk song, a genre that usually doesn't have catchy songs. The title song uses an accordion to become jazz. The piano and horn in "Tango Till They're Sore," another jazz song, are slightly off key but it works. "Jockey Full Of Bourbon" even uses mambo to sound like it should be part of some old-time noir film. Waits has such a talent for songwriting, and the lyrics on Rain Dogs are no exception. I just love how he crafts his stories and characters. Even if he simply describes several characters without any plot or connecting pieces, as in the abrasive "Cemetery Polka," there's something so captivating by the way he growls "Uncle Vernon." "9th & Hennepin" might contain some of the best Waits lyrics yet as he describes a woman that "there's nothing wrong with her $100 won't fix." And then there's "Big Black Mariah," a slang term for a hearse, because only Tom Waits could write a story involving a hearse. The sound effects throughout allow this album to stand out. They're natural in a way that I didn't realize how natural sound effects could be musically. "Singapore" is realistic sounding at the end in particular with rain and some sort of tense aspect, deliciously discordant in a way that only Waits can do. "Gun Street Girl," with a steady blues beat, uses a blue note for its clang--I suspect it was some sort of bell on a boat. The album is good, but too many songs were misses for me, which was a surprise for someone who can find a lot to enjoy with nearly any Waits song. Several of these songs will be on my regular rotation, at the very least. I'd say this is a 4.5 but not high enough to round up.

This works best in its entirety and is proof that a schtick - here, the XXL blues growl, the marimba clatter and the ticker tape feed of street life tropes - can become brilliant with enough conviction and effort. Enjoyed this more than expected, though as much as something to think about as to listen to. Always a jolt of happiness seeing Robert Quine cameo. Is this his only track with Keith Richards? Ribot shines.

I don't like Tom Waits' voice, it drives me bonkers but I'll say in the context of an album, it's pretty great. I would put this on again and the songwriting is great!

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!

The Bill Lynch version of Pet Sounds

It's OK but I much prefer his barfly period to this Beefheart one. The songs aren't really that much fun to listen to, and it's not as clever as it thinks it is, a bit one-note in theme and sound. Contrast to e.g. Closing Time which is up there in my top 10(ish). [EDIT: Didn't grow on me in the meantime. Maybe I'm a tedious romantic but TW's first few albums with his real singing voice are so much more enjoyable. I can identify a "challenging" album by the fact most of the songs are quite short (<3 min) yet still feel interminable. The 2:46 of "Singapore" could be a life sentence.]

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.

Tom Waits is a smug, uninteresting charlatan that uses a gravely voice and back alley imagery to make himself appear to be a TRUE artist. A man of the people. The REAL people. The ones you wouldn’t dare spend time with. But Tom Waits will! He’ll get fucked up with a one armed go-go dancer. He’ll knife fight with a junkie!! It reminds me of Joe Rogan using psychedelics as a personality. It’s more interesting than my 9-5, but it’s also not that interesting. He’s Jim Morrison without the charisma, talent or good looks. Cant lie though the second half of this album had moments. He was also good in Licorice Pizza.

i don't get it. not my thing. wouldn't seek it out.

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

Music for men who think they look cool while wearing stupid hats

It's giving Disney movie villain

Its like our 5th tom waits and I'm still not getting the big deal

Evil Muppets music

The first 20 seconds of the opening track made me want to turn it off immediately but I suffered through half of this until I gave up. This would be a two star for the instrumentals but that would be giving it too much credit. Clown music written exclusively for annoying people to love.

I know people around here have a hard on for all things Tom Waits, but let's face it: his "music" is fucking weird.

This...felt like a waste of time.

# Album Name: Rain Dogs # Artist: Tom Waits # Rating: 1/5 # Comments: Honestly, this was a fucking awful album. How this guy has so many albums on this list blows my mind. # Top Tunes: None # Would I listen to it again? No

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.

Cookie Monster has been drinking again...

I cling to this record like Linus does to his blanket. Waits keeps you warm.

Great album. My favorite track are Time, Downtown Train, Rain Dogs, Clap Hands, Hang Down Your Head, Blind Love, Gun Street Girl.

Love the variety and lyricism on this. 4.5/5.0: Excellent

A lot of variety, every song sounds different. There were a few that weren't as great but none of them are long so it doesn't really drag the album down.

Had no idea what to expect, and I absolutely loved it. So unique and brooding.

If you read about Tom Waits, you'll find that writers always struggle to define his genre. Is it jazz, or blues, or banging on trash cans? Is it theater or cabaret or something dredged up from a swamp around New Orleans? Is it a fusion of all these? He's a hard one to define, and I've always appreciated that about him. My favorite album is not on the 1001 list and that's Swordfishtrombones which preceded Rain Dogs, and I recommend living in that one for a while. Both are 5/5 for me.

Ridiculously stacked album. All bangers. Waits really paints a perfect picture, and he doesn't even need lyrics to do that either. The instrumental itself is enough to give my brain and setting and it's characters. His stuff works on such a subconcious level I don't even try thinking what the song looks like, I just see it playing in my head. Insanely talented, I don't think he's ever made a bad album. Or even any below "great"

Noen låter minner meg for mye om Springsteen, men heldigvis er 95% piratmusikk!

I LOVE everything about this album except his voice for some reason. It's really weird because I love Cohen and Dylan and all of the other bad singer, but his voice irritates me. Everything else is still so perfect it gets a 5

My favorite Waits album on this list, and possibly my favorite of his full stop (I'm also partial to Mule Variations). I don't think anyone paints vivid character-and-place portraits with their lyrics and music like Waits. His music is the best I've come across at invoking the feelings of both longing/regret as well as the beauty of life's little details. Just a master of his craft.

I'll search for comprehensive information about this classic album to ensure an accurate and well-rounded review. **Rain Dogs** (Island Records, 1985) stands as the crowning achievement of Tom Waits’s “Island Trilogy”—the alchemical middle ground between the skeletal experimentation of *Swordfishtrombones* (1983) and the theatrical excess of *Franks Wild Years* (1987). Recorded at RCA Studios in New York City and co-produced with his wife Kathleen Brennan, the album marks the moment Waits fully abandoned his beat-poet-barfly persona of the 1970s for something far more fractured and enduring: a junkyard orchestra of found sounds, Weimar cabaret, and gutter-blues poetry that redefined what American songwriting could sound like in the Reagan era. --- ### **Production & Musical Architecture** The sonic signature of *Rain Dogs* is immediately confrontational. Waits and Brennan assembled a ragtag ensemble—featuring guitarist **Marc Ribot** (in his first collaboration with Waits), drummer Stephen Hodges, bassist Larry Taylor, and a surprising cameo by **Keith Richards** on three tracks—to create what critic Robert Palmer described as “rhythmically irresistible, uniquely powerful” textural chaos . The production rejects 1980s gloss entirely. Instead, Waits pursues what guitarist Ribot called “orchestra accuracy with back-alley blues” —a tension between precision and entropy achieved through: - **Unconventional percussion:** Marimbas, brake drums, doorbells, and a massive 32-inch bass drum create rhythms that clatter rather than swing - **Brechtian instrumentation:** Accordions, muted brass, and pump organs evoke Weimar-era cabaret, filtered through Captain Beefheart’s angular experimentalism - **“Wrong” notes as aesthetic:** Ribot’s guitar playing deliberately avoids blues clichés, favoring drunken, off-kilter lines that mirror the instability of the lyrics The result is a “junkyard orchestra” aesthetic—organic, raw, and deliberately anti-professional. It sounds like it was recorded in a basement near the East River at 3 a.m., which, spiritually, it was. --- ### **Lyrical Content: Cinema of the Dispossessed** If the music creates the alleyways, Waits’s lyrics populate them with ghosts. Working from his recent relocation to New York City, Waits adopts a cinematic, panoramic approach to character studies that rivals Charles Bukowski and Damon Runyon . **The opening triptych** establishes the rules immediately: - **“Singapore”** drops us onto a diseased whaling ship with surreal imagery (“While making feet for children’s shoes”) that signals this won’t be linear storytelling - **“Clap Hands”** delivers the album’s manifesto in its marimba-driven creep: *“Steam, steam, a hundred bad dreams / Goin’ up to Harlem with a pistol in his jeans”* - **“Cemetery Polka”** transforms family reunion gossip into a grotesque polka, name-checking “Uncle Vernon” and “Auntie Maime” with dark affection Waits’s word-choice operates like physical texture. In **“9th & Hennepin”** he sketches a diner counter where the waitress has a “tattooed tear / One for every year he’s away,” while outside, “the wind is making speeches / And the rain sounds like a round of applause” . These aren’t metaphors chosen for elegance; they’re weathered, specific, and bruised. The ballads provide necessary oxygen amid the clatter. **“Time”** contains perhaps Waits’s most devastating couplet: *“The things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget / That history puts a saint in every dream”* . Meanwhile, **“Downtown Train”**—later a hit for Rod Stewart—functions as the album’s one concession to pop structure, though Waits’s original remains ragged, desperate, and unmistakably his . --- ### **Themes: Lost Scents and Urban Decay** The title **“Rain Dogs”** refers to dogs lost in a storm who cannot find their way home because the rain has washed away their scent. This becomes the central metaphor for the entire record: displacement, loss of bearings, and the impossibility of return . The album’s New York is not the gentrifying city of Wall Street excess, but a **pre-gentrification underworld** of card sharps, immigrants, and broken romantics. Tracks like “Union Square” and “Gun Street Girl” map a geography of marginalization, while **“Blind Love”** (*“You’re east of East St. Louis and the wind is making speeches”*) posits geography as emotional state . There’s a persistent **tension between romance and grit**. Waits finds beauty in rust—finding the “Roosevelt dime” shining in the gutter, celebrating the “crumbling beauty” with tattooed tears. It’s an album about resilience rather than redemption; the characters endure, they don’t transcend. As the closing track **“Anywhere I Lay My Head”** declares over a Dixieland funeral march: *“I learned to be alone”* . --- ### **Influence & Cultural Legacy** Few albums have so thoroughly redrawn the map for alternative music. **Thom Yorke** of Radiohead cites *Rain Dogs* as a formative influence, praising its cinematic quality where “every track was a short movie set to music” . **Nick Cave** drew from its narrative well for his own character-driven songwriting, while hip-hop producers like **DJ Shadow** sampled its percussive textures . The album’s reach extends into the mainstream through **“Downtown Train,”** which Rod Stewart took to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989, providing Waits with financial stability while ironically sanitizing the song’s desperation . Its influence on film is equally profound—the track **“Jockey Full of Bourbon”** features prominently in Jim Jarmusch’s *Down by Law* (1986), starring Waits himself, cementing the album’s visual aesthetic in cinema . Critically, the album has achieved canonical status: - **Pitchfork:** 10/10 (2025 reappraisal), ranked #8 best album of the 1980s - **Rolling Stone:** #357 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2020) - **NME:** #105 on their 500 Greatest Albums list --- ### **Pros & Cons** #### **Pros** - **Unprecedented sonic innovation:** The “junkyard orchestra” approach created a template for experimental Americana that remains unmatched in its cohesion despite its chaos . - **Peak lyrical achievement:** Waits’s image-making here is at its most precise and devastating; every line feels carved rather than written . - **Emotional range:** The ability to move from the abrasive clatter of “Big Black Mariah” to the tender bruise of “Time” demonstrates rare artistic versatility . - **Ensemble chemistry:** The interplay between Ribot’s guitar, Richards’s loose rhythmic sense, and Waits’s percussive direction creates a band sound that feels telepathic . - **Timeless production:** Unlike many 1980s records, the deliberate rawness avoids dated synthesizers or drum machines, sounding as alien and fresh today as in 1985 . #### **Cons** - **Deliberately abrasive aesthetic:** The clanging percussion, off-key brass, and “wrong-note” guitar work can be actively unpleasant on first listen—or for listeners seeking melodic comfort . - **Vocals as acquired taste:** Waits’s gravel-throated growl, fully committed to character work, alienates listeners who find it theatrical to the point of parody . - **Inconsistent pacing:** With 19 tracks and nearly an hour of music, the album’s constant tonal shifts—from polka to tango to blues—can feel disjointed or exhausting rather than dynamic . - **Obscurity for obscurity’s sake:** Some critics argue that tracks like “Midtown” (an instrumental) or “Bride of Rain Dog” prioritize atmosphere over substance, suggesting Waits’s commitment to weirdness occasionally overrides editorial discipline . - **Accessibility issues:** For fans of Waits’s earlier, jazz-tinged piano ballads (*Closing Time*, *Blue Valentine*), this represents a bridge too far into experimentalism . --- ### **Conclusion** *Rain Dogs* is not an album that meets you halfway. It demands that you descend into its New York City of rain-slicked streets, broken accordions, and busted narrators. Yet for those willing to make the trip, it offers one of the most complete artistic visions in popular music—a world where beauty and ugliness are not opposites but siblings, where every clang and whisper serves the architecture of the song. Forty years after its release, it remains the definitive Tom Waits statement: the moment when the “poet of America’s non-nine-to-fivers” (as Robert Christgau described him) found the precise sonic vocabulary to match his literary ambitions . It is, as *Pitchfork* noted in its perfect-score retrospective, “a romantic and carnivalesque masterpiece” that captures the sound of civilization’s rust eating away at the American dream—beautiful, broken, and ringing like a bell you can’t unring .

I didn't realise I needed an album in my life that sits at the intersection of New Orleans Blues, sea shanties, noir vibes and gritty, boozy folk music but I absolutely did.