Rain Dogs - Tom Waits

Released in 1985, this is my favorite Tom Waits record, and it's on the short-list of my favorite all-time albums.  The record came on the heels of Swordfishtrombones, and continues that album's approach of eccentric instrumentation, spare and atmospheric production, and surreally poetic lyrics.  On Rain Dogs, Waits perfected the formula, adding Marc Ribot's distinctive guitar to an assortment that includes accordion, marimba, banjo and horns. 

It's a sprawling album, containing 19 songs in a true variety of styles (Kurt Weill opera, ballads, polka, country, New Orleans-funeral jazz).  Lyrics and music complement each other sublimely, especially on the stark "Jockey Full of Bourbon", the haunting "9th and Hennepin", and the beautiful "Time".  It culminates with one of the best-ever album closers, "Anywhere I Lay My Head", with its defiantly shouted lyric and the aforementioned jazz funeral march.

Like other Waits albums, this one is peopled by a ragtag bunch of desperate souls, criminals, prostitutes, lonely saints and sinners.  The album was written in Manhattan and the feeling of dark, rain-washed city streets is palpable throughout the album (although it's difficult for me not to imagine the opening scenery of black and white New Orleans from "Down By Law" when I hear "Jockey").   It's a masterwork by the ever-experimenting Waits, a singular artist and one of my musical heroes.

For a long time I had assumed that the male figure on the cover was Waits himself,  but this photograph is by a Swedish photographer, taken in a German cafe in the '60s.