Tom Waits- Rain Dogs

Label: Island

Reissued 9/22/2023, Originally released 1985

Noted as Tom Waits’ most critically acclaimed album, Rain Dogs follows the new musical path Waits had taken with Swordfishtrombones. Considered the middle of a de facto trilogy with Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years, Rain Dogs is the first of Waits’ albums to be written in New York, in a Lower Manhattan basement. A 53-minute, 19-track monster, Rain Dogs is a kind of mutant, late 20th century musical “Canterbury Tales” with a shape-shifting band. There are banjos and marimbas and bowed saw and parade drum and howling horns (and Keith Richards and Marc Ribot) on this rollicking, rough-hewn opus—and Waits, using his voice in increasingly weird-and-wild ways. The songs are stories, sagas, laments, breakdowns, character studies, comedies and cabaret numbers. There’s the aching “Hang Down Your Head,” and the moving anthem, “Downtown Train,” which was covered by Patti Smith and Rod Stewart.

Track listing:

1. Singapore
2. Clap Hands
3. Cemetery Polka
4. Jockey Full of Bourbon
5. Tango Till They're Sore
6. Big Black Mariah
7. Diamonds & Gold
8. Hang Down Your Head
9. Time
10. Rain Dogs
11. Midtown (Instrumental)
12. 9th & Hennepin
13. Gun Street Girl
14. Union Square
15. Blind Love
16. Walking Spanish
17. Downtown Train
18. Bride of Rain Dogs (Instrumental)
19. Anywhere I Lay My Head