Rain Dogs

Rain Dogs is the eighth album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits. It’s often considered the middle album of a trilogy of sorts, starting with Swordfishtrombones and ending with Frank’s Wild Years.

It’s an unpredictable, thoroughly unique album that, really, could only have been made by Tom Waits. Here he refines and perfects his style to an impeccable degree – the songs all sound like they were performed by some derelict Dixieland jazz band of the damned and Waits spits out demented poetry like he could easily be muttering these songs to himself as he wanders in and out of alleys in the dead of night.

This is undeniably reinforced by Waits' total willingness to experiment in the studio. As he’s said of his process:

If I want a sound, I usually feel better if I’ve chased it and killed it, skinned it and cooked it. Most things you can get with a button nowadays. So if I was trying for a certain drum sound, my engineer would say: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, why don’t we just sample something?” I’d say, “No, I would rather go in the bathroom and hit the door with a piece of two-by-four very hard.

Rain Dogs was primarily influenced by his recent move to New York City with his expectant wife, Kathleen (their first son, Casey, was born shortly after the album’s release).

The album was a stunning critical success (and is still universally regarded as a classic) and achieved some chart success, peaking at #29 in the UK and #188 in the US.