Rain Dogs — 1985

Background

Rain Dogs was released in 1985, the second album in what's often considered Tom Waits's experimental trilogy alongside Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years, continuing his shift away from the more conventional piano-and-strings balladry of his earlier career toward a rawer, junkyard-percussion-driven sound incorporating clattering, unconventional instrumentation and a grittier, more theatrical vocal delivery.

Sound

'Jockey Full of Bourbon' and 'Singapore' open the album with clattering, off-kilter percussion and Waits's gravelly, theatrical vocal delivery, establishing a sound that draws on blues, vaudeville and avant-garde composition in roughly equal measure. 'Downtown Train' offers a more melodically conventional moment amid the record's otherwise raucous, unconventional arrangements, later becoming one of Waits's most widely covered songs.

Range and characters

The album is populated with a vivid cast of drifters, dreamers and outsiders, Waits's lyrics functioning almost as short vignettes or character studies set to music, delivered with a theatrical, almost Brechtian sense of performance. Guitarist Marc Ribot's angular, unconventional playing throughout gives the record much of its distinctive, off-balance character.

Legacy

Rain Dogs is widely regarded as one of Tom Waits's finest and most influential albums, its junkyard-orchestra sound and vivid character-driven songwriting having shaped decades of subsequent alternative and experimental songwriters drawn to unconventional instrumentation and theatrical delivery. It remains a favourite among critics and fellow musicians as the clearest statement of Waits's post-1980s reinvented artistic identity.