The consistency with which Waits closes before the mainstream since the 70s, culminating 1983-87: Lots of organ, brass and countless articles that have been misused as percussion, rumbling and rolling uncompromising down everything them in path represents. Waits transforms on the albums "Swordfishtrombones," "Rain Dogs" and "Franks Wild Years" in a final step to the final musical eccentrics. Shocked by the sound of "Swordfishtrombones" his label Asylum puts him promptly to the door.
Good two years later appears with "Rain Dogs" under the new label Iceland Records a continuation of the cult album of 1983. Waits rages out in all sorts of genres and forms Country, Irish Folk and Gospel a turning point to his usual sound cosmos. He makes strengthened bonds with Kurt Weill and so conjures up the second act of a demonic Threepenny Opera up how he can not be blacker. The Californian singer portrays people who live on the margins of society and drown every day anew in a swamp of violence, sex and drugs. Since time immemorial, the 61-year-old had experimented on his albums with voice - drove them to the limits of duty: he barked, howled, screamed, roared and let explode the words literally into the microphone. "Rain Dogs" is no exception. Whether it's the Pirate Anthem "Singapore", the whispering "Hang Down Your Head" (the first song he wrote with his wife Kathleen Brennan) or the screaming in despair and agony "Anywhere I Lay My Head" is: Almost all the songs are carried by the voice of Songwriters. What does every now and then also the capacity of the listener to the test when Waits example rusty and monotonous "Tango Till They sore" growls.
In the background, however, act two, important for album, components as disparate can not be: the avant-garde guitarist Marc Ribot and drummer Michael Blair exception. Already the opener "Singapore" falls on Ribot's pithy guitar dotting the auditory nerve as a thousand tiny needles. Blair is the whole of unconventional, but no less effective: Again and again he thrashes a on old furniture and garbage cans; slams doors or zerdeppert porcelain. Very few songs from "Rain Dogs" pass by without being pushed by Blair's ruthless rhythm machine. One of these exceptions is the elegiac ballad "Time", which tells of a person who has lost everything in life.
In order to make the team the eccentric musician perfect Waits Keith Richards invited. The second man in the Rolling Stones headed next to his guitar playing with the backing vocals of "Blind Love".
"Rain Dogs" is Waits varied album. However, one in which he shows little experiment. The songs remain as part and outliers like "Trouble's Braids" of "Swordfishtrombones" One looks in vain. However, he did the bridge between rock, blues, folk and alternative elements never so skillfully beaten as here. "Rain Dogs" is a bizarre puzzle in the match at the end of all the parts perfectly, even though they do not really belong to selbenn image.
