It's raining...dogs

Album: Rain Dogs

Artist: Tom Waits

Label: Island

Release date: 30 September, 1985

Peak chart position/sales: (US) #188 (UK) #29

RATING: 4.5/5 stars

It is fair to say that anybody listening to Tom Waits for the first time has the right to be startled: it is one thing to hear his name, but quite another to hear his voice.  Unfamiliar with Waits' "distinctive" vocal style, my first encounter with Rain Dogs was a baffling one. This man seemed to be...howling...like a dog? While an audience cheered? But the biggest shock came when he actually started to sing. Confronted by a slightly demented barrage of drunken yet deliberate bawling, I thought I had the wrong guy and impatiently clicked the next YouTube hit under his name. More of the same. Thankfully, critic Daniel Durchholz confirmed Waits' identity for me when he described his vocals as sounding as if they had been "soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car".  Ahh, so this was indeed the Tom Waits I was supposed to be listening to. Moreover, the live performance video that I had just watched was in fact a performance of the title track of the album I was about to review - Rain Dogs, a mammoth collection of 19 tracks, an album which proved to be Waits' highest-selling release and one which has since asserted itself as an irreplaceable staple of any 1980s music collection.

At first, it's difficult to get comfortable with Waits. Difficult to see through the thick curtain of cigarette smoke that seems to surround opening numbers "Singapore", "Clap Hands" and "Cemetery Polka", difficult to relax when the textured array of organic percussion beats is getting wilder, and the instrumentation so uninhibited; and perhaps most difficult to connect with the raspy bourbon-soaked persona that is performing - at first one is inclined to feel as if they are being serenaded by the local drunk. But there is something so entrancing, so beguiling in Waits' deliveries, that as he rasps his way seductively through "Jockey Full Of Bourbon" or lets loose in uninhibited bawls in "Big Black Mariah", you almost don't notice that you've let him sidle up and win you over with thumping rhythms and beer-hall raucousness.


Just when you've settled into the steady thump, bash and jangle however,  "Hang Down Your Head" bursts into a gentle, easily flowing guitar melody and the drunken dementia lifts from Waits' vocals somewhat, restoring intelligibility and coaxing the more reticent listener into the album. Once the cracked and wistful "Time" has finished, the cigarette smoke and booze have dispersed and a fragile sort of musicality begins to shine through. It is not until now that you realise how much of a backseat the music takes to Waits' dominating vocal style and not until now that you begin to appreciate the musical make-up of the songs. Whether it's a seductive wail from the saxophone, a tainted jangle from a beer-hall piano, a cheeky descending line from lead guitar or spine-tingling accordion riff, the music is patched together from odds and ends of charisma that perfectly compliments Waits' deliveries.

This is an album by a man who knows his city and its people - and knows them well. Waits is not just an artist painting a picture, he convinces us that he has lived these stories - or at least heard them first hand. "I'm lost in the window /I hide on the stairway /I hang in the curtain /I sleep in your hat" whispers Waits on "9th & Hennepin". Interspersed with a couple of short, inspired instrumentals such as the soundscape-esque "Midtown", the whole album plays like a study of the homeless or just plain down-and-out of New York city, coated in the grunge of pollution, the stench of poverty and the slurred rants of a drunken lunge at emotional escape. Songs such as "Cemetery Polka" form an extraordinary litany of personalities and their sordid human tendencies: "Auntie Mame /Has gone insane /She lives in the doorway of an old hotel /And the radio's playing opera and /All she ever says /Is go to Hell" Waits growls.


In the days of vinyl, "Time" signalled the end of side one...on side two, Waits is back to being a slightly unbalanced gutter-dog with the cabaret-influenced title track. However, this is no conventional recapitulation of previous material: Waits suddenly accelerates the musical variety, barely sticking with one style for any more than a single track. "Gun Street Girl" turns into the wailing blues, while "Union Square" explodes with an undeniable dose of rockabilly. "Blind Love" toes the line of country and "Walking Spanish" comes within a hair's breadth of jazz standard. It is the heart-wrenching cry that is "Anywhere I Lay My Head" however, that truly surprises, erupting into a touchingly tender conclusion to the comprehensive ode to city scum and hardship that formed the previous 18 songs.


In any album review, you will notice I usually whinge about something. In fact, I have even developed favourite areas to whinge about about, which fit into about three categories as follows: originality, variety, and lyrical/musical expertise. Then, to back up the whinge, I usually refer to a suitable comparison so people can see exactly what's wrong with the music. Rain Dogs is undeniably original, showcases a stunningly versatile array of variety and includes some of the quirkiest and most creative use of lyrics and instrumentation that I have ever heard. As for comparison - don't make me laugh.  Attempted by any other, it is not difficult to predict an unenthusiastic reception and whispers of insincerity, but Waits' fearless and whole-hearted performances are so unafraid of scorn that it seems pointless to direct any at it. Besides which, once you're swept up in the fascinatingly and unapologetically roguish tunes, you're not feeling scornful at all. An album that holds the listener captive from start to finish and truly a display of authentic innovation and original musicality.


Is it worth my $$$? - Yes. This is an album that needs to be listened to in its entirety and, filled with so many standout tracks, it is a worthy sale indeed.


Listen to: Jockey Full Of Bourbon, Time, Rain Dogs,