Rain Dogs

*Well, it's 9th and Hannepin/And all the donuts have/names that sound like prostitutes/And the moon's teethmarks are/on the sky like a tarp thrown over this...*

Will you follow once again, as Tom takes you down by the docks, down among the bars and wharves, among the tars and tattoos and whores, the baling hooks, the faded beauties and lost causes, conspiracies and demented dreams, the jetsam bits and pieces and bodies, the unidentified floating objects, the seedy flophouses, the carnival on the edge of town? Into his world of transients, washouts, thugs, freaks, bimboes, soiled sheets, one night stands that stand forever, whiskey and sentiment and bags bull of memories jolted into meaning as the head bangs the table...

For whatever reason, Waits' music has a real special way with people - it's like an illicit affair for a lot of them - far from the supermarket, the disco and the polite conversations of the modern world. It comes jabbering fragments and prismed visions from the dark end of the Street, hawing bad breath and liquor dreams all over the carpet. And in its multitative boozy sentimental/savage scenarios, they glimpse a kind of kaleidoscopic truth. *In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king* (Singapore).

It's not that they've lived it themselves, but it has more than the fascination of the exotic. Everything Waits sings about is still recognisable for the flesh he puts on it - it's not like a Victorian map: Here Be Savages. It's that the characters, the situations, the emotions and depictions are all... graphically humane. In your more empathic moments you may smell the liquor and see the blood. Or vice versa.

'Swordfishtrombone', his last record, and his first for Island, was Album Of The Year for the Hot Press critics last year. It was great. This one is even better.

It is, as a unit, more coherent, more complete. There's hardly a word or a note that doesn't impact in some way, and there's plenty of each - it's one of the longest albums I've encountered in years, with seventeen songs and two short instrumentals.

At the same time 'Rain Dogs' maintains the diversity of 'Swordfishtrombone'. From one end to the other, Waits runs the gamut of (his singular) vocal possibilities, from the tender 'Hang Down Your Head', through the wailing violence of 'Big Black Marian', touching some cinematic recitation on the way, and an almost Richard Burton-like performance on 'Singapore'.

The musicians and arrangements are entirely compatible with his vision too, even, believe it or not, Keith Richards who plays guitar on three tracks!

Instruments like marimba, organ, 'paradedrums', accordion, pump organ, harmonium, and (what'll I call them?) Sally army brass, all heighten the carny feel, but the more orthodox instruments like piano, guitar bass and drums are used superbly as well.

Simple stuff, minimal even, but its the effect that counts. Jagged angular guitar figures, rolling stroking drums. (It's all in the pattern - using the floor toms rather than the snare for example), contrive to suggest more rather than less. Then there's the songs - all seventeen of them. Over the years Waits has become less literary in his lyrics, less precious, the songs have developed a more raucous r'n'b feel and structure, the more sentimental love songs have become simpler and less rambling.

In some senses these developments make for a less dense music than, say, 'Small Change', less actively dramatic. At the same time there's nothing passive about this.

What makes Waits' music special is his willingness to take a chance on lyrics and sounds that get across his meaning as he wants it, veins and all. The choice of words, themes, character, narrative and structures are all for strength in the music. It's the absolute antithesis of computerised market-researched pop.

What comes out of the nineteen tracks is a gut-level carnival/flop-house/motel ride across America via Vienna and the Far East, on an eighteen-wheeler sampan. There's grim banjo-picking folksongs like Gun Street Girl.

'*Took a 100 dollars off a slaughterhouse Joe/Bought a brand new Michigan 20 gauge/Got all liquored up on that road house corn/Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow corvette*, which in its slapping sweeping strokes encapsulates the wandering, the loneliness and the violence at the heart of America.

'Blind Love', a stow country song by Joe Cocker out of Merie Haggard and Jersey Girl; roaring r'n'b in 'Walking Spanish'; :Go on and tip your hat up to the Pilate/Take off your watch your rings and all/Even Jesus wanted just a little more time/When he was walking Spanish down the hall*.

There's carnival bellowing organgrinding 'Cemetery Polka'; James Bond Latin 'Jockey, Full Of Bourbon', Yorktown mid-European-New York boozy minor key singalong razor fighting 'Tango Till They're Sore', a great song, and... and...

Well, it keeps going. There might even be a left-field hit single or two in 'Downtown Train', and 'Hang Down Your Head'.

Whatever about that, one thing is for sure. This is an essential purchase No home should be without a rain dog this year.