Tom Waits - 1985 - Rain Dogs

 

Tom Waits started out doing the singer/songwriter thing in the early 1970s, quickly transforming to a sort of drunken Beat poet persona. He did some great music in the 1970s, but after he met the woman he would marry, Kathleen Brennan, while working together on the soundtrack to Francis Ford's Coppola's One from the Heart (1982), he embarked on one of the great creative peaks and transformation in music.

He made three consecutive albums in the 1980s that are cohesive and each one a masterpiece: Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), and Frank's Wild Years (1987).

He had sobered up and found inspiration not only from collaborating with Brennan, but also with avant-garde music. He began using elaborate instrumentation, finding sounds in "instruments" not common in modern music. He also embraced the theater, and his music reflected that. 

I will post the other two mentioned here (along with a few more essential Waits albums) eventually, but this is a great place to start. A marvel of creativity and breadth.

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