Your House is on Fire; Your Children Are Alone: A Week with 'Rain Dogs'

A Quick Aside:

I've listened to Tom Waits' album 'Rain Dogs' approximately 13 times this week: sitting at home, at work, in the car, and lying in bed at night. And on about day three it hit me that I can't remember the last time I did this with an album. There is just so much music out there, good and bad, that spending a week exclusively listening to the same thing seemed almost wasteful to me. Think of all the other new things I could be listening to! All the undiscovered horizons! The quest to discover the next big thing! I so often make snap judgements with music that to really delve into an album was more difficult than I thought it would be. I realized that it takes more than a cursory half-listen to really decide how I feel about an album. That music isn't simply 'good' or 'bad,' but a lot of little things that add up to how I feel about it and why. I learned that I can't really discover the ins and outs of an album and place it in the 'keep' pile or 'discard' pile so quickly. Not to get mystical or anything but focusing all of my listening energy onto a single cluster of 54 minutes of music, over and over again, made me really think about why I enjoy music and what I get out of listening to it. But I suppose that was the whole point. 

'Your House is on Fire; Your Children Are Alone': A Week with 'Rain Dogs'

I think it was about 6 years ago at college that I first gave listening to Tom Waits a try. I made my way down to the local library and checked out 'Rain Dogs' excited about listening to what I had read in many reputable sources was one of the best albums of the '80s. I made it about half-way through the first song, Singapore, before switching it off. What was this? This was terrible. I can sing better than that. This was the best album of 1985? And that's about as far as I made it into Tom-Waits-land until recently.   

I think my favorite description of Tom Waits' voice that I've read was that it sounded "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." That's about right. And I think for many people, including myself, that first exposure to his signature growl is where the interest in exploring his work ends. That is a real shame because I've learned that our dear friend Tom has a lot to offer and that 'Rain Dogs' is one of the best albums I have listened to in a while.

'Rain Dogs' is almost a concept album of sorts. Each song is a different vignette of a down-on-their-luck character trying to scratch out a living in the damp, cold city they live in. Almost every song also jumps musical genres from blues to rock to jazz to pop to folk to gospel to country and even polka. And while this carnival ride of styles might sound like a recipe for disaster, I think it's a testament to Mr. Waits that the album works as well as it does. This circus of 19 tracks are held together by the ringmaster that is Tom. His voice (which while maybe not 'technically' good) is one of the most expressive ones I have had the pleasure of listening to. His cadence and style morph from song to song; from a huge, clunking roar on Big Black Mariah to a soft, hurt, and even beautiful whisper on Time. It's his voice that guides us along through the weird and wonderful journey of 'Rain Dogs.' What I found so unappealing a few years ago, I now find very expressive and engrossing.

This album also has a very strong sense of place; both in sound and lyrical content. It reeks of the city. Dim, dank, gin-soaked alleys. Washed-up people just trying to get by. Seedy characters carrying out dark deeds. Everything is just a tad left of center. The instrumentation adds to this feeling. The percussion on many of the tracks sounds like people just whacking wooden chairs or bashing trash can lids together . Bells, marimba, organ and other interesting sounds find their way onto the record adding a unique underpinning to many of the tracks. And while it may not be a 'fun' listen, 'Rain Dogs' is never a boring one. It's a ride that never lets up. Each track is a different journey, a different sad, lonely person to meet. Waits' lyrics are also vague enough to let the listener fill in some of the gaps and add their own spin to them; the lines being both somehow clearly drawn and open to interpretation at the same time. I've never been a master at figuring out what lyrics mean, but the weird and kooky world that Tom portrays in 'Rain Dogs' was one that I could follow and appreciate most of the time.

And as with any album there were certain stand-out tracks: Clap Hands, with its marimba infused beat and almost chain-gang style of lyrical repetition; Jockey Full of Bourbon, jammed with evocative lyrics and a wonderful, slinky guitar lead; Anywhere I Lay My Head, closing out the album with a beautiful horn-led snippet of a song where Tom's vocal soars with an astonishing level of growl. And Downtown Train. What a song! There is a reason Rod Stewart's cover found success. This is a wonderful song and it is probably where the whole thing clicked for me on the first listen. It is most likely because it's the pop-iest of any track on the album (if I learned one thing in the past few years of listening to music it is that 'pop' is not a dirty word). 

As you can see, I clearly enjoyed my time with this album very much; and I know that no matter how much I've enjoyed and tell you over and over again about it, for some of you Tom's voice will just be too much of an impasse. And that's ok. We don't have to like the same things. But if you are able to continue on and explore the wealth of goodies that 'Rain Dogs' has to offer I think you will find that Waits has a lot to give you beyond 'a weird voice.' Definitely a keeper, this one.

Til next week!

Up Next: Kurt Vile's 'Wakin on a Pretty Daze'