Day 0559 - Rain Dogs

Tom Waits "Rain Dogs" (1985)

If "Swordfishtrombones" was a drunken left-turn down a dark alley, populated by an assortment of weird and unusual characters; "Rain Dogs" is Waits deciding that he likes the alley-way and setting himself up in his spot around the trash-can fire.

The beat poetry and drunken piano ballads are largely gone in favour of stories about the aforementioned odd characters, backed by honking horns (that occasionally drift into New Orleans jazz territory) and interesting melodic percussion.   Regular John Zorn collaborator Marc Ribot provides guitar for the album with playing that ranges from jazzy surf and twangy lead, to abrasive avant sounds, and everything between.  The music includes remnants of his bar-room piano balladry, and even some country and western, but mostly it's a whole new world.

Waits' voice ranges from his newly adopted barking shout, to a gravelly croon, occasionally even dabbling in a sort of affected nasally cabaret vocal.

Day 0472 - Heartattack and Vine

Tom Waits "Heatattack and Vine" (1980)

 
After 5 or 6 albums leaning on his downtrodden barfly troubadour persona, Waits started changing it up here. There are one or two songs where he still slur-croons clever couplets over a loungey jazz piano, but the guitar starts to play a much bigger role in his compositions, and Waits starts exploring his bluesy yell-mixed-with-Cookie Monster vocal that would come out full force in later albums.

For a guy who used to put out albums every year or so in the 70s; the 80s onwards have been increasingly sparse as far as his musical output goes (with the exception of his dual releases 'blood money' and 'Alice' in 2002).  Maybe that's due to an increase in acting roles and soundtrack music... or maybe he's just been enjoying life outside of the 'business.