Rain Dogs

This is the Tom Waits album that I keep coming back to. It was also the first one I heard many years ago and its appeal has really lasted. For anyone who hasn't heard any of Waits' music before it is also the ideal point to come in. Some of his earlier and later works ('Small Change', 'Real Gone', 'Frank's Wild Years')are much more inaccessible and require a lot of patience whilst his early stuff like 'Heart of saturday Night' is pretty unrepresentative of the bulk of his work. 'Rain Dogs' has the advantage of perfectly capturing the spirit of Waits but also being an album of very good songs. But be prepared to work at it if you are coming to Tom Waits fresh then he requires a couple of listens after the initial reaction of "What the hell is this!?!" It is wonderously atmospheric in its representation of society's dark underbelly. Waits' gravelly, liquor-soaked voice fits perfectly with the weird, carnivalesque music of tracks like "Singapore", "Rain Dogs" and "Cemetary Polka" whilst the latino-inspired "Jockey Full of Boubon" is a wonder. The lyrics throughout are simply amazing - lyrics don't come much better than "Uncle Bill will never leave a will, and the tumor is as big as an egg. He has a mistress, she's Puerto Rican, and I heard she has a wooden leg". There are just too many standout tracks here to mention, true of 'Rain Dogs' more than any other of Waits' albums. However, "Time" is simply Waits at his best musically whilst "9th and Hennepin" is him at his most poetic and evocative. Musically this album has taken virtually the entire gamut of music from jazz, blues, latin dance, rock, Cajun and American folk as its inspiration. Its beyond measure in its reach. One of the best albums ever made. (10/10 - I've loved this for years, I still do)

This has been my favourite album for the last 10 of the 15 years I have owned it - in spite of some of the more accessible tracks like Downtown Train, Gun Street Girl and Blind Love, the album as a whole took some time to really take root in me. You may not love this right from the start but give it time, it gets under your skin. The lyrics and dogged pace of Singapore is unlike anything else (who else could describe sailors' shore leave activities as "making feet for childrens' shoes"?!), to the darkness and dankness of 9th and Hennepin, the rocking track Walking Spanish, to the 3am, whisky fuelled version of Anywhere I Lay My Hat, it's going to take at least another 10 years before I get bored of this classic.

This is THE strangest and most evocative album I've ever heard. I agree with a previous reviewer that it does get under your skin, the melodies and lyrics, on first hearing, seem ugly and discordant, but the more you listen the more you realise just how complex, clear and beautiful they are.

This may sound strange, but somebody should make a movie just to fit around this album...featuring seedy, foggy docksides, whaling ships, sweaty Cuban jazz clubs, hookers, cops, cigars, bourbon, tequila and steamy downtown neon-lit streets - it's all in there.