Customer Reviews

Rain Dogs

5 star:		(119)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have long loved Tom Waits, and have a host of his albums, but this gem of a record remains by far his best effort. It isn't just that many of his best songs are on this album, but that virtually all of the songs are at least highly listenable. The quality of RAIN DOGS can be seen in the fact that a large number of artists have recorded this album's songs.

Musically, the amazing arrangements sound like Kurt Weill meets Captain Beefheart meets a carnival barker meets a bottle of bourbon. As the album begins and moves from "Singapore" to "Clap Hands," you know that you are not dealing with a three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust performer. What is stunning after the album's first few songs, however, is how lyrical Waits becomes as the album goes on. For all the raucousness of some of the numbers, it is easily balanced by the beauty of songs like "Downtown Train," the gorgeous "Time," or the mournfully drunken "Blind Love." Waits employs a crack back up band, with significant guess appearances with performers like Keith Richards. The star back up musician is, however, Marc Ribot, who as he so often does provides stunningly original guitar lines that embellish every song upon which he appears.

Lyrically, Waits has never been better, turning out one superb line after another. Several of the songs read as more than decent poetry, and many individual lines pop out, such as (from "Time") "The things you can't remember tell the thing you can't forget" or, in the best line about being down, down and out I have heard, "When you're east of East St. Louis" (with apologies to East St. Louis). Or what about this great line from "Blind Love": "They say if you get far enough away/You'll be on your way back home." Even some of the less well-known songs on the album, like "Tango Till They're Sore," are lyrically stunning.

I'm a big fan of Tom Waits, but while in his other albums I always find him at least interesting, I still find there are a lot of individual songs that aren't up to the level of his best work. RAIN DOGS is Tom's best album partly because it contains many of his best songs, but partly because it contains absolutely none of his worse. This is all the more remarkable given the fact that RAIN DOGS was one of the first albums to take advantage of the greater capacity of CDs to expand the number of cuts. Despite the larger number of songs, there are no weak cuts and no filler.

It's 1:30 AM. You're alone and it's hot, and ALL your sheets are firmly to the wind. Rain Dogs [and another drink] is all you need.

Waits' style is a personal one, distinct and poetic, so trying to convince me he's got a best album is like trying to convice someone they like filet mignon more than grilled salmon! All his albums are great meals, so just because you're bound to prefer one to another doesn't mean your tastebuds are better than anyone else's -- the only way to know which you like best is to sample them for yourself.

Because if you like Blues and standard arrangements, try Heartattack and Vine or Blue Valentine. If you like softer stuff or jazz hipsterism, try Heart of Saturday Night or Nighthawks. And if you like it more deviant, try Swordfish or Bone Machine. Waits's got something for everyone.

And yet in answer to all the critics, if you want them all on one plate -- if you want pop and jazz, blues and acoustic, raveups and hoedowns, and lyrics you actually want to read like a book -- there's no way you can go wrong with Rain Dogs. I don't doubt this is the one album that would make ALL Waits fans' top 5.

From there, you're on your own. Because like all great experiences in life, one person's worst might just be your best.

It has been said that Britain may have spawned the Beatles and 90% of all other great musicians of our era, but that America makes up for it by having Tom Waits. Listen to this album and you might start to see why.

I am admittedly a fan of the "middle" period of Waits' career. I find his early work interesting because it shows him trying to find his personal "voice"--a songwriting idiom that works for him. Waits began his career by writing mostly formulaic love songs with a blues edge or wistful melodies sung alone with solo-piano accompaniment. Then, with "Heartattack and Vine" and "Frank's Wild Years" Waits was beginning to find his voice. Here, he finally found it.

First of all, this album is most consistent in placing three of Waits' constant themes in almost every song: rain, whiskey, and trains. Almost any image you can conjure up featuring those three things is probably found in a Waits song somewhere. The songs on this album also display a variety of subject matter sometimes lacking on Waits albums. There are uptempo, upbeat songs, humorous short ditties that sound like nursery rhymes, and a lot of what Waits does best: songs with a catchy tempo or a hum-along chorus that you can hear over and over and then realize they're simultaneously the saddest and most haunting songs you've ever heard. Songs on this album which fit this description are "Rain Dogs", "Downtown Train" (shame on you if you thought that was a Rod Stewart original!), and "Hang Down Your Head".

Tom's next album, "Swordfishtrombones", comes close to the lyrical virtousity and perfect blend of musical skill and eccentricity displayed here. Since then he has tried many different directions with his music and his latest two albums show that he is on the verge of making another masterpiece like this one any day now. Don't get me wrong, his latest work is a hundred times better than anything else out there today, but "Rain Dogs" is definitely the place to start.

Rain Dogs is one of the greatest albums that no one else on my college campus has heard of. Waits is an incredible songwriter, in the top class with only a handful of others. This is an interesting album in that it may be called a Waits sampler album. He has the rough jazz/blues with the growling lyrics that some of his albums are known for and the ballads that others are known for. His experimental blues tracks are incredible, Singapore, Clap Hands, Jockey Full of Bourbon are all great songs. His voice adds to the texture and realism of the characters. The true highlights of the album, to me, are the slower songs, Time, Downtown Train, and Anywhere I Lay my Head, which rips my soul out every time. The placement of the instrumental tracks is interesting in its obvious strategy. One is after the title track because after that song, the sheer power of it, the listener needs some time to cool down; then between Downtown Train and Anywhere I Lay my Head, because the songs would be too much back to back. Waits voice is an interesting instrument. Tori Amos was on Letterman last night and performed Time. She did a very good job, putting all of herself in the song and the audience loved it. However Waits is in that regard is like Dylan. You can cover the songs, but no one can sing Dylan like Dylan, and no one can sing Tom Waits like the man himself. That voice is incredible.

After seeing Tom sing "Tango Till They're Sore" on David Letterman when I was 19, I rushed out to buy Rain Dogs the next day. I have listened to it more than any other single album that I own and never get tired of it. Now that I am older, with three kids, listening to the album is a completely different experience for me. It's evocative of that time in my life, when I could stay up drinking till 4 am and still show up for class at 8, but it's so much more. Poignant, profound, and moving as ever, this album will always be near and dear to my heart. I give it a 5 and this is the only review I've posted on Amazon.

It is rare for any lyricist to pen a verse as remarkably specific and thoughtful as "Make sure they play my theme song I guess daisies will have to do/Just get me to New Orleans and paint shadows on the pews/Turn the spit on that pig and kick the drum and let me down/Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'til I get back in town/Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair." Yet Tom Waits belts out such verses with regularity on his epochal "Rain Dogs," one of the best releases of the 80s.

Waits functions almost like a sponge for every style of American music of the last century; you can hear within the howling, sepia tones of his roughened voice the distant echoes of blues, jazz, ragtime, folk, country, and old school rock 'n roll. Yet for all of his homage to roots music, Waits displays a creative cunning and adventurousness that is seldom seen among singer-songwriters. Take, for example, his adroit use of percussion backdrops--never does he take the easy way out and use a simple drum pattern, opting instead to craft a pulsing rhythmic collage that drifts unsettingly beneath an array of icepick guitar (courtesy of Marc Ribot and, in some places, Keith Richards) and bar-room piano. Such an approach only hints at Waits' unique genius and his seemless mastery of American music.

It is hard to determine whether Waits' acute lyrics or his soulful, wounded voice merits more praise; the former are so complex and beautiful ("And they all pretend they're orphans and their memory's like a train/You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away/And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget/That history puts a saint in every dream") that they often leave me speechelss, while the latter imbues these words with a grizzled character and the tangible feeling that every scene and every character that escapes from Waits' mouth is just as real and just as colorful as he claims it is.

Named for dogs that lose track of their scent in the wake of a rainstorm, "Rain Dogs" is stained with feelings of broken love and bluesy lament; you can almost see Waits sitting at some street corner in the middle of a gullywasher, strumming a guitar and beating a conga whilst bestowing wisdom and pure poetry. The blue and somber and tones of this album ebb and flow brilliantly with Waits' more whimsical moments ("Uncle Vernon, Uncle Vernon, independent as a hog on ice/He's a big shot down there at the slaughterhouse/Plays accordion for Mr. Weiss"), and the result is nothing short of one of the most unique and intricately crafted albums in history.

I bought this album in college, at the height of my U2 craze, when Bono listed it in the ROLLING STONE artists' poll as one of his favorites. I thought, "Hey, it'll probably sound like U2."

Ha! The record starts off with the squawk of a deranged parrot, then into the lurching, alcohol-soaked marimba rhythms of "Singapore." After a brief intro, Waits begins to croak in a devilish growl: "We sail tonight for Singapore / We're all as mad as hatters here."

Mad indeed. The characters that populate "Rain Dogs" are losers, loners and drifters, their stories spilled out of an old burlap bag full of evocative details. ("All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes.") Waits' loping arrangements support the lyrics with an almost cinematic eye toward unforgettable images. If you close your eyes, you can almost feel the grit and grime of the timeless city Waits paints, as fractured guitar riffs by the likes of Marc Ribot, GE Smith, and Keith Richards tumble over drunken rhythms and freight-train rockers.

Back in college, my girlfriend and I laughed at "Rain Dogs" when we first heard it. I thought about selling it to a used CD shop, but I was having so much fun playing for my friends as a lark! Soon, however, I found myself hooked into this strange and foreign place -- and this visionary artist who has always followed his own path. If you're the type of listener who can get into something completely original, "Rain Dogs" -- along with its companion pieces "Swordfishtombones" and "Franks Wild Years" -- is the musical diversion you've been waiting for.

Thankfully there still are some genious writers in the music business. Tom Waits is one, and this is his stronges effort. "Rain Dogs" features such mazingly innovative classics as "Singapore", "Jockey full Of Bourbon", "Time", the title song, and "Downtown Train", wich should you not mix up with the dreadful version recorded by Rod Stewart. The atmosphere is pretty conducted with New York City, as you can hear on "Downtown Train", "Midtown", "Union Square" and so on. As much as an outstanding composer is, maybe even more, a storyteller. The lyrics aren't any "I-know-how-it-goes-I-know-it-all"-type of ones; no, they are actually pretty down to earth, wich makes it easier for listeners to put theirselves in the story. Tom hasn't had the easiest life, so the songs aren't all that happy either. His voice makes the songs even more soulful and familiar. In the perfect world "Rain Dogs" would be rated among the biggest sellig classic albums ever recorded. Instead, it is a classic among anyone enjoying great stories about everyday life. Tom Waits is the most valuable musician in the music business today.

I heard the gravelly voice and incredible lyrics of Tom Waits for the first time two years ago on a friend's copy of "Mule Variations." While my exposure to the wide breadth of his past material and musical evolution has been gradual, I became a fast and devoted fan. "Rain Dogs" is the third of his albums that I bought, and what a piece of work it is.

There's such a variety of sounds on this album - "Rain Dogs" truly showcases Waits's ability to take any musical style and call it his own. The album starts out with versions of Waits's classic junket band, a sound that first entranced me with the much later "Cold Water". The first three tracks ("Singapore," "Clap Hands," and the weird "Cemetary Polka") are a ramble down the bizzare and dark. The title track lies in the middle of the album, and begins with a melancholy accordian solo, then becomes a delightful romp in the life of the "Rain Dogs," who "...danced and swallowed the night / For it was so ripe for dreaming." A more country sound is present in the earthy "Gun Street Girl" and the twangy melancholy of "Blind Love." It's an incredibly varied album, yet Waits still fuses it all together somehow.

The Uptown Horns, a brash and boisterous quartet of sax, trumpet and trombone players, contributed their talents to most of this album, much to the delight of the listener. There is the instrumental entitled "Midtown" - an explosion of brass that sounds like it's setting the scene for a private eye flick. For other songs, one or two of the horn players often accompany Waits's vocals. The trombone player of the band contributes to my favorite song on the album, "Tango Till They're Sore." This is a delightful piano-and-trombone croon that evokes wee-hour gatherings with friends after a long, staggering night out: "Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair / Deal out jacks or better on a blanket by the stairs / I tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past / Send me off to bed forevermore..."

Waits is an outstanding songwriter and poet, and the lyrics for all the songs on "Rain Dogs" never fail to be vivid and poignant. Whimsical ("Diamonds and Gold") or cruel ("Ninth & Hennepin"), all evoke clear, unusual, and very human images that are unmatched by other songwriters -- no wonder Tom Waits is one of the most covered artists of our time.

"Anywhere I Lay my Head" is last on the list. With the Uptown Horns playing a slow, taps-like accompaniment, Waits croons with his signature voice, "I don't need anybody / Because I learned to be alone / And anywhere, anywhere I lay my head, boys / I will call my home." The horn quartet caps it off with a boistrous oom-pahing coda, you can almost see them strutting away down Bourbon Street. Undoubtedly one of the best finishes to an album I've ever heard.

The middle album of the Mid-80s trilogy (between "Frank's Wild Years" and "Swordfish Trombones") is considered by many to be Tom's greatest album. Who am I to argue with this assessment? On a dark and rainy night with a tumbler of bourbon, there is nothing that completes the mood like this disc.

Quite simply, Tom Waits is a poet. Like Leonard Cohen and Shane McGowan--and even Louis Armstrong, from a different era--Tom's voice is evocative in it's harshness. Expressing a tough life of too much whiskey and too many cigaretes, songs such as "Downtown Train" (forget the good but not great cover by Rod Stewart), "Walking Spanish", and "Gun Street Girl", or spoken poems like "9th and Hennepin" add just the right amount of urban blight accompanyment to create something that is completely and totally unique, and beautiful.

I do have my favorites on this disc: "Tango Till They're Sore" with its images of a New Orleans funeral procession; the Country-music strains of "Blind Love"; and one must not forget the simple, raw emotion of "Time". There is no true filler material on this album, and the great songs are among Tom's greatest. All in all, the one Tom Waits album each fan must own above all others.