Tom Waits – Rain Dogs [180g Vinyl LP]

Tom Waits – Rain Dogs [180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo
• Catalogue Number: 488985 3
• Barcode: 602448898531
• Genre: Experimental Rock / Avant-Garde / Blues / Americana
• Label: UMR / Island Records
• Originally Released: 30 September 1985
• Reissue Released: 22 September 2023
• Pressing: 180 Gram Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Rain Dogs is the twelfth studio album by Tom Waits — released on 30 September 1985 on Island Records, produced by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan and recorded at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, California — and the most celebrated and widely cited album of his career. The second in a loose de facto trilogy with Swordfishtrombones (1983) and Franks Wild Years (1987), it deepened and expanded the radical sonic reinvention Waits had begun on Swordfishtrombones: abandoning the piano-bar balladry and orchestrated jazz of his 1970s Asylum Records work entirely in favour of a music assembled from junkyard percussion, Eastern European accordion, marimbas, bowed saw, parade drums, howling horns and fractured blues — a sound with no obvious precedent in commercial American music and a profound influence on the experimental rock, indie and alternative scenes that followed. It appears on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and is consistently ranked among the greatest albums ever made in any genre. The title derives from Waits' own coinage: the term "rain dog" refers to a dog who has lost its way home after rain has washed away all the familiar scent trails — a metaphor for the human figures that populate the album's nineteen songs, each one a displaced, marginalised or wandering character rendered with the specificity and compassion of a short story writer.

The album was written in a basement apartment in Lower Manhattan — the first Waits album written in New York — and its imagery is saturated with the particular texture of that city: Union Square, 9th & Hennepin, the waterfront, the merchant marine bars, the slaughterhouses. The band assembled for the recording is exceptional in its range and quality: Marc Ribot (guitar) — making his first appearance on a Waits record — contributes playing of extraordinary inventiveness throughout, his tone veering between Django Reinhardt, free jazz and pure noise depending on the song's demands. Keith Richards plays guitar on three tracks — "Big Black Mariah", "Blind Love" and "Union Square" — drawn to the sessions by a mutual admiration that had developed over years of parallel outsider status. The rhythm section moves between drummer Michael Blair, percussionist Larry Taylor and a variety of unconventional sound sources. Arrangements were contributed by Kathleen Brennan, whose creative partnership with Waits — formalised on Swordfishtrombones — is at the centre of the album's identity. The album opens with "Singapore" — merchant marines, distant ports, Waits as shanty singer — and proceeds through nineteen distinct character studies: the accordion player in a slaughterhouse ("Cemetery Polka"), the "jockey full of bourbon" ("Jockey Full of Bourbon"), the withdrawn woman in an empty room ("Time"), the wandering narrator of the title track, and the urban derelicts of "Union Square" and "9th & Hennepin". "Downtown Train" — a love song of considerable melodic directness, subsequently covered by Patti Smith and reaching the US top five in Rod Stewart's version — is the album's most immediately accessible track and one of its greatest. The closing "Anywhere I Lay My Head" distils the album's thematic core — displacement, belonging, the search for rest — into five minutes of stately, organ-led blues.

This 2023 reissue on UMR / Island Records is the first ever remaster of the album, sourced from the original ½" flat master tape — remastered in 192kHz/24-bit high-resolution audio by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering under the guidance of Waits' longtime audio engineer Karl Derfler, with vinyl lacquers cut by Alex Abrash at AA Mastering. The reissue was personally overseen by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. The original album packaging has been fully restored. Pressed on 180 gram black vinyl, Made in the EU. Five Island Records albums by Waits — Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Bone Machine and The Black Rider — were reissued simultaneously across autumn 2023, each remastered from original sources.

Tracklist

Side A

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 and Gold
8. Hang Down Your Head
9. Time
10. Rain Dogs

Side B

1. Midtown
2. 9th & Hennepin
3. Gun Street Girl
4. Union Square
5. Blind Love
6. Walking Spanish
7. Downtown Train
8. Bride of Rain Dog
9. Anywhere I Lay My Head

Credits

• Tom Waits – Vocals, Instruments, Producer
• Kathleen Brennan – Producer, Arrangements
• Marc Ribot – Guitar
• Keith Richards – Guitar (Big Black Mariah, Blind Love, Union Square)
• Michael Blair – Drums, Percussion
• Larry Taylor – Bass, Guitar
• Chris Bellman – Mastering (Bernie Grundman Mastering)
• Alex Abrash – Lacquer Cut (AA Mastering)
• Karl Derfler – Audio Engineering Supervision
• Label – UMR / Island Records