I always get mixed up between the two. Which one has In The Neighbourhood on it? That edges it for me.

(But Tom's best album is always his next one! I can't wait)

Swordfishtrombones every time. It has greater variety of styles, pace, mood and sounds. Even the instrumentals add something extra. Each piece/song is delicious and worth equal value to whole albums (Frank's Wild Years & Trouble's Braids being the obvious examples but people have made whole careers out of the bombast of 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six). Is there a better love song by anyone than Johnsburg, Illinois? Have you heard anything more heart-breaking than Soldier's Things? Point me to a track more raucous than Down, Down, Down or stranger than Shore Leave. It premiered the 'junk-yard' sound & sticks to the classic album running time (Rain Dogs is a touch too long). Each of its parts are beautiful, bruised things of wonder but the sum of those parts makes an even greater whole.

Possibly the best album ever made!! Right now, I can't think of a better one.

... even though it doesn't contain 'Frank's Wild Years.' But 'Jockey Full Of Bourbon' more than makes up for it. What a great solo.

because of Blind Love and Downtown Train but they are both great

That's like asking which one of the children I prefer!

Swordfishtrombones was my entry to the world of Tom Waits after seeing the video of In The Neighbourhood on The Tube, but choose between them (and a few others) - nah, couldn't do it.

for me. Love them both though.

I couldn't and wouldn't separate them. First heard Swordfishtrombones / Raindogs when a friend taped them both for me on a C90 cassette ( remember them? ). I just played both albums in a constant loop to the point they blurred into one. I love them both dearly and think they compliment each other beautifully.
As for a favourite of Uncle Toms'...Mule Variations. It's got everything - clatter and clash( Big In Japan ), piano ballads( Picture In A Frame ), spoken monologue( What's He Building In There? ), weirdness( Filipino Box Spring Hog ) - not to mention gems like Hold On, Cold Water and the sublime I'll Take It With Me When I Go ( would bring a tear to a glass eye ).
I do love Tom Waits. I 'see' his songs as much as I hear them. Things like Shore Leave, Goin' Out West, Franks Wild Years ( I could go on ) just sound like little movies to me.

Whenever I'm asked my favourite album ever, this is my reply. I've pondered whether I am saying it out of habit but decided that, much as I love Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs is the album I would choose if I could only save one from a house fire.

First Tom Waits album I discovered so have a bias there. It was also a constant companion while doing my degrees and for all its bash,and crash it has some wonderful songs.

..... of this...

Case closed.

I'd pick Swordsfishtrombones - I think it is more of a piece, and it seems more mysterious, all nods and hints, glimmers and glimpses. The cough on Frank's Wild Years is one of the funniest things ever.

Raindogs is magnificent too, and it arguably has some even better songs, (in that the peaks are higher, like Downtown Train, but the songs are more variable overall) but it seems more sprawling, less compact. And there are some times when more sprawling would be the thing for me, but not this time.

I love them both, and I am delighted that the OP has asked this question, as I will be settling down in half an hour or so with a large glass of red and Swordfishtrombones. Then some more red and Rain Dogs.

because it's longer.

On the other hand Sword has a special kind of creepy atmosphere. And the sound of an artist reinventing himself is pretty compelling.

THE WHOLE TOWN'S MADE OF IRON ORE!

... aaaaand rest.

..is coming out of the grille,like the whole Goddamn town is ready to blow". It's Rain Dogs for me.

I had to watch "In The Neighbourhood" on youtube before listening to the CD as I love the video. The album cover on Swordfishtrombones obviously was shot during that particular video.

Yep, Swordfishtrombones is great, but Rain Dogs is better!

'Underground', 'Shore Leave', 'In The Neighbourhood', 'Frank's Wild Years' and 'Johnsburg, Illinois' are the best on the album and are fantastic in their own right but they're just the warm up. His imagination goes into overdrive on Rain Dogs, especially on 'Singapore'and 'Cemetery Polka'. On this album we first get to hear Mark Ribot's fabulously original guitar solo style(eg on 'Jockey Full Of Bourbon'and 'Hang Down Your Head')and of course Keef plays a bit of country style geetar too.

Maybe it is the guitar thing that does it for me...there's almost no guitar on Swordfishtrombones. 'Downtown Train' is one of my all time favourites...magic guitar work by ...er someone's name that has escaped me....*bloody red wine*!

I've just listened to both and Rain Dogs still gets my vote.

Oh buggers...I just noticed some has thrown Mule Variations into the mix.

For those who haven't seen "In The Neighbourhood" on youtube -

seem to me to as different as 2 children born a 100 years apart. Swordfishtrombones is the gifted one locked in the attic. Raindogs is the bright, successful wanker who does not acknowledge his autistic brother, but is hollow as hell. There can be no comparison, which is why Tom Waits is as good as he is. Sorry for using "as" so much.

And I'll be honest, only because I heard that one first and it was like a window opened in my mind. Poetry and beauty but played on bin lids was pretty much what I thought. 16 Shells is such a song.

This isn't to denigrate Rain Dogs by the way. Those two albums are pretty much the two best albums of the eighties as far as I'm concerned. But if it's preferences then the only critical standard I can apply is "which one did I hear first?"

Swordfishtrombones but Downtown Train is my Tom Desert Island Disc.
I find it almost impossible to single out any particular Waits album.
He's yet to make his masterpiece IMHO.
That said I do love listening to Nighthawks At The Diner.
I've seen him live a couple of times but that album makes me regret not seeing him at Ronnie Scott's, surely the perfect Tom venue.

I agree: all his albums sound like works in progress. I think this is part of what keeps you coming back for a further fix.

Orphans almost made it as the "definitive" Tom. Some people just get annoyed by his "gravelly" tones, but it's the kind of voice that (if you like it in the first place) just gets better as the years take their toll.

1. I love the word "ought" in "16 Shells from a thirty-ought Six".

2. I looked up Johnsburg, Illinois on a road map, just to check that it actually exists. It does.

3. I was never keen on the Midtown instrumental until I spent a week in a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, and yes, that's exactly what the city outside sounded like.

4. "9th & Hennepin" sounds like Bukowski. This can only be a good thing.

5. Waits's two albums previous to "Swordfish" were "Heartattack & Vine" and the "One from the Heart" soundtrack. There was absolutely no sign then that he'd climb aboard the "Captain Beefheart Weird Shit Special," as someone once put it. Perhaps it was Kathleen Brennan who was the driving force? Tom's music has certainly never been the same since they met.

6. These are two consistently inspired and brilliant records.

Swordfish gets a 9.9.
Rain Dogs gets a 10

Never could stand that dog.

One of the great album titles for a start.

Yep, Frank's Wild Years, love it.

What impressed me were the instrumentals like Dave The Butcher - again, another great title - one of those tracks that you hear and feel a flood of relief and excitement that someone has actually done this brilliant thing. It sounds like a cross between Nino Rota and Kurt Weill.

was my gateway to the world of Tom. Before that I'd heard half of Swordfishtrombones, but it didn't click with me then, aged 13 or so. After I heard Downtown Train, and then Rain Dogs, it suddenly made sense and I was hooked to Tom, both past and future.

As others have said above, Jockey Full Of Bourbon is a thing of wonder, especially as heard in the opening sequence of Down By Law.

And the sight of Tom, leering like a lunatic from beneath a burning umbrella, performing 9th And Hennepin in the movie Big Time will never leave me...

So my vote, as you've probably guessed, is for... Swordfishtrombones! Much as I love Rain Dogs, SFT is the one I'm more likely to reach for. There's not much between 'em, though...

I'm off now to pull on trouble's braids.

Swordfishtrombones edges it for me. But the definitive Tom Waits album is clearly "Blue Valentine".

I now wish I had described myself as a "Swordfishtromboner."

since they are both great albums. I just wanted an excuse to post what I think is Tom's finest hour (and it is an hour at least in the full version)

("Tramp" & Tom Waits: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet)

Just beautiful - I think I'd like this played at my funeral (either this or Kentucky Avenue from Blue Valentine)

There can be no other.

I mean, don't get me wrong, Swordfishtrombones is a good album, but I feel it was just Tom working out what to do next. Rain Dogs is where he nailed it.

The lyrics are fantastic from start to finish "The captain is a one-armed dwarf, he's throwing dice along the wharf". What more can you say. This is an album full of bible-black gallows humour, none more so than on "Cemetary Polka", which is just chock full of creepy misfits and leftovers.

The music can only really be described as "skronking", parping horns and dissonance all over the place, as the sound of bones and guitar twangs brings the madness to the fore. The free jazz instrumentals just add to this effect.

There is beauty in the mix, in the hushed fragility of "Hang Down Your Head" and elegiac "Time", as well as my personal favourite (and one of my desert island discs) the world-weary love letter from the bottom of a glass that is "Anywhere I Lay My Head", which even though its a simple song, still finds time to descend into a New Orleans style jazz coda, that ends the album perfectly.

Even the tracks that I initially hated "Downtown Train" and "Blind Love" I have grown to appreciate and respect. I discovered "Rain Dogs" when I was 16, and have held it so very closely for the last 9 years. Swordfishtrombones was the blueprint for the house that Rain Dogs became.

he has emphysema and he's almost blind!!!

Swordfishtrombones, no question.

Here, for all us "Swordfishtrombones" fans, is Peter Gabriel doing a version of "In the Neighborhood" at home on the piano.

Sorry if everyone's already overfamiliar with this; I'd never seen it before, despite the fact that Gabriel and Waits are two of my favourite artists.