Tom Waits - Rain Dogs

Generally I like Tom Waits well enough on a song-by-song level without ever having lost my head over his music in the way that a lot of people I know and meet seem to - I've never had the patience to penetrate past the gravelly voice and general clatter and mess and so have never really 'got' him. Rain Dogs, though, has proved to be something of an exception. I picked it up a few weeks ago after hearing "Downtown Train" playing in a record store and being very taken with its gruff, chugging rockisms (not realising that it was Waits till I went to the counter and saw the cd case on display) - this probably reflects the skewedness of my listening patterns, but the closest cognate for the song that I can come up with is Springsteen's Born in the USA - and I'd heard "Time" before (Waits ballads have a way of sticking in the mind), but it turns out to be very listenable from start to finish, and on repeat play, too. Nice!