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.

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.

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

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!

Deep and wide and scary and charming.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Didn't realize he was in seven psychopaths.

Sounds like nothing else, wonderful and complicated

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.

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.

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.

Tom Waits at its best.

That voice!

SIMPLE THE BEST

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

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.

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!

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"

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

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.

If you ever feel bad about your music tastes just remember that many people consider this to be one of the greatest albums of all time.

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.

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

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.

I first heard Tom Waits almost 30 years ago - and I filed away as weird and not for me. Revisiting it, I found it to be amazing. Really enjoyed this.

New Orleans. Gothic. Fairy Tales. Blues. Great lyrics.

A Waits classic!

Escuché el primer tema y se me vino a la cabeza instantáneamente la parte de Robots que están en el deshuesadero. Y claro, es un tema del mismo chabón (busquen Underground de Tom Waits). Alto disco, flashero y experimental.

My favorite of his

Genial.

Tom Waits at his finest.

Love it. I could listen to this all the time. Never was there a greater combination than Tom Wait's voice and the quirky folk music he sings over.

Superb album. Great tracks with some super standout numbers, Hang Down Your Head & Jockey Full of Bourbon. Revitalised Rod Stewart’s career as well.

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.

Easily my second favorite Tom Waits album and probably his best. I don't want to live in the world he depicts but goddamn do I love imagining it as he describes it one story at a time. He is the king of texture, especially with his signature outside the box percussion. "Anywhere I Lay My Head" is a fantastic closer, like a New Orleans funeral that tears you up, but also feels triumphant and joyful. Bonus: he mentions both Cincinnati and Minneapolis in the lyrics.

Great, different, but it could totally grow on me

Sounds fresh even 40 years later

His best album in my opinion, which I don't say lightly as a superfan. It sounds like he was so in-stride. In some ways it's a great distillation of his career, because he uses so many styles, dabbles in different genres, uses various voices and characters. Lots of great songs, not a dud on the album. I could go on and on, if I could give this one an extra star I would. My favorites on the album are probably the first and the last song, "Singapore" and "Anywhere I Lay My Head."

great album, thank you

Late in the evening, in the land of one-armed dwarves, broken promises, women with wooden legs and dive-bars, Tom Waits is King. "I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things"

Great

Love it!

I love this album so much. It is in my favorite top 3 Tom Waits albums. When I first started listening to Waits around 2001, I wasn’t mature enough to enjoy his piano ballads. Now that I have aged like a fine carton of milk, my soft middle-aged brain/heart accepts every note Tom has ever recorded. Over 20 years ago, I used to skip tracks like Blind Love, but now it feeds my soul. I still get plenty of joy out of the weirdo favorites like Jockey Full of Bourbon and Clap Hands, but hearing songs like Anywhere I lay My Head and Blind Love is what I look for when I put on a Tom Waits album these days. If you like Tom Waits, there is a better-than-a-good chance we would get along. More Waits, please! 6 out of 5 stars.

Superb album with a great and intense interpretation of all the lyrics and also an outstanding composition: masterpiece!

This album is a party. I can't say I was ever much of a Tom Waits fan other than moderately admiring his off-beat persona, but this album changed everything. I love this whole thing from start to finish. I like the instrumentals, Waits's unique voice, the poetic lyrics, and the variations in terms of the musicality. There are songs like Singapore and Clap Hands that are wacky, theatrical pieces, there are songs like 9th and Hennepin that are full-on beat poetry recitations, and then there are songs like Downtown Train that feel like an attempt at a Top 40 single in the style of Dire Straits, the Cars, or Springsteen. Love this album. Will definitely re-listen to it!

Oui! Un vrai choc. C'est bizarre mais merde c'est beau. Au moins je ne me serai pas lancé dans ce bazar pour rien : j'aurai au moins découvert cet album

God, this album goes so hard. Yes. Fuck yes, Tom.

I love this album! Tom Waits is definitely an acquired taste though, not everyone's cup of tea.

I like the funk. This album with the New Orleans influences really spoke to me. I felt like this was the musical equivalent of House of Leaves, it was experimental, and a piece of art. It was spoken poetry one moment and uptown funk the next. It gave me feelings of Audrey Hepburn and then jazz parades, after that, I was turning a corner into a noir film. The next moment I was met by the deep bass voice that ran through the album keeping it coherent and gave the entire thing a flow. All in all I absolutely loved it for the work of art that it is, it filled me up, and didn't let me down. 35/20 bananas. 5 stars.

A fucking brilliant Tom Waits album, one of his very best no doubt. Getting this on Halloween weekend also really works for me so cheers for that. Just so much fun. Jockey Full of Bourbon is something else. As is the title track. Marc Ribot is tremendous. All of it is something else. The stories! I feel sad for anyone who just can't enjoy this. But they almost certainly hated Devo too. Phil Collins...

I'm quite familiar with this. It's Tom Waits. You probably love it or hate it. This is a no Brainerd 5 for me. Tom is just a phenomenal dude.

Very unpredictable track to track but still very good

Tom's got the magic marimba blues and it's beautiful.

Still top dogger

What an enticing album! Lives up to its ratings for sure.

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.

Love it!

Classic

My ear normally is at it most blissful when listening to lush, polished pop, but this album struck something deep within me. I wish I could teleport myself to New York City on a snowy day to enjoy it in its full glory. 9/10 Fave: Time or maybe Anywhere I lay my head

A scary drunk (ghost?) pirate wanders into a haunted house, sits down at the piano, and orders another whiskey

Discazo que me hace preguntarme por qué no le entré antes a Tom Waits y solo ubico covers que le han hecho. Me encanta el feeling de dirge de NOLA que tienen muchas de las canciones, que pese a ser basicamente oscuras y de temáticas fuertes provocan ganas de bailar. Y al final resulta que el disco no es ni siquiera muy largo, aunque tiene 19 canciones apenas llega a la hora; sin embargo esa hora con la voz de Waits sí llega a ser mucho y es mi único punto relativamente en contra, porque su voz cuadra perfecto con la estética.

Heftige greier!

Waits, discussing his mistrust of then fashionable studio techniques, said, "If I want a sound, I usually feel better if I've chased it and killed it, skinned it and cooked it. Most things you can get with a button nowadays. So if I was trying for a certain drum sound, my engineer would say, 'Oh, for Christ's sake, why are we wasting our time? Let's just hit this little cup with a stick here, sample something (take a drum sound from another record) and make it bigger in the mix, don't worry about it.' I'd say, 'No, I would rather go in the bathroom and hit the door with a piece of two-by-four very hard.' Hell ya. Also the inclusion of guitarists Keith Richards and Marc Ribot add a very nice chaotic-playing style. Although quite abrasive, there is a mix of some quieter songs like "Time". Classic Waits.

ideal long walk home in the rain slicked streets album

This was a bit of a treat. With Tom Waits it kind of depends on whether or not you like his shtick, and I generally do. But I don't think I'd ever heard this record, though I know some of the songs. It's great, musicically adventurous and lyrically interesting. Best song for me is Hang Down Your Head just pipping the more obvious Downton Train.

Tom Waits is one of those artists that I always felt I was just expected to like. So I resisted liking him for a long time. And then one day...I guess I finally heard the right song(s) or something and now I love him. It feels to me like he channels music from somewhere not of this world. Good variety of styles on this record. Not every song speaks to me personally (sorry Downtown Train) but there are a few that I love a lot (Jockey Full of Bourbon, Big Black Mariah, Gun Street Girl). I've heard the comparison to Cookie Monster before but this is the first time I've noticed that sometimes Tom Waits sounds like Christopher Lloyd (specifically on the title track here).

While it might be his most commercial album, there is a certain charm to this album that made me a life-long fan.

Tom Waits is een held

Magnificent album, the best of the 'Franks' wild years' trilogy and my favourite Tom Waits album. It's a kaleidoscope of styles, sounds and stories all rooted in a downtown world of dives, old world funerals, and hard-bitten women for whom 'nothing that a $100 wouldn't cure'

Everyone deserves to hear Tom Waits' cigarettes and sandpaper voice sing them this gutter opera.

Fantastic collection different sounds and moods for each song all tied together by the uniquely beautiful voice of Tom Waits

Rain Dogs makes me nostalgic for a time and place that feel long ago and far away and that in reality only exist in Tom Waits' mind. Tom is a masterful lyricist, resulting in songs that paint pictures with their words. Tom's raspy voice, whimsical arrangements, and eclectic instrumentation all make this an unmistakable Tom Waits album and unlike anything else. If you can get past how freakin' weird it is, you'll be rewarded with a 54 minute vacation from reality well worth taking. "Singapore," "Hang Down Your Head," "Time," "Rain Dogs," and "Downtown Train" are the standouts for me.

This one's already very fun! Strange guy, never listened to Tom Waits before. It really gives the guy from Over the Garden Wall, the Highwayman. I like it! Old soulful dark barstool crooning, bluesy.

Chalk it up to me being over-tired while listening to this album, but I thought this was excellent. As I tend to do, I focused more on the background music than the lyrics, but the clunky mix of brass, marimbas, and miscellany painted its own picture of Waits’ smoky, rough-and-tumble city. Also the songs are good HL: “Downtown Train”, “Tango Till They’re Sore”, “Hang Down Your Head” September 17th, 2022

Oh shit guess we are in it now with Singapore. Clap Hands sounds really familiar. This one is more snappy and to the point than Swordfishtrombones, which was a good one. Gun Street Girl is killer. Walking Spanish is so evocative.

Where do I start here?? Obviously, one does not listen to Tom Waits for his voice, just as one does not listen to Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen for the same reason. Waits is a wonderful and unique poet, His lyrics on this album paint a picture of a down and dirty city life. One of my favorites is the sad but beautiful "Time." Waits is also a musical craftsman, putting sounds together unlike any other artist. The song titles Rain Dogs and Bride of Rain Dogs made me think of Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein. I see the similarity in that Waits takes parts from different bodies (of work), sews them together, and brings the result back to life in strange and unnatural ways.

Classic - hold on

Five stars. One of the absolute best albums on the list.

Ruw, maar mooi. Gevarieerd & album blijft leuk

Deadly

'Singapore' as the opening track sets this album off on the right foot straight away. Classic Tom Waits genius of eclectic musings set to a soundtrack that sends your mind into a world of basement jazz bars and lonely streets.

LP

Solid 5.