DAVID BOWIE

Not exactly where you should start with Bowie, his debut album catches him with one foot in the past and one with the future. On the one hand, you have songs in an old-fashioned easy listening style with interesting, off-beat lyrics such as The Little Bombardier (a ballad about a lonely ex-soldier accused of pedophilia) and Love You Till Tuesday (the cheeky song of a creepy stalker whose infatuation doesn't last the week), and on the other you have songs tied in with the trends of the day - whether it's the mild psych of Join the Gang or the orchestal-trippy Silly Boy Blue or the folky Come and Buy Me Toys - with stilted, cliched lyrics.

Occasionally Bowie manages to be musically modern and lyrically adept, as on We Are Hungry Men or She's Got Medals; other times he manages to be lyrically stilted and musically out of date - the worst possible combination in this case (When I Live My Dream is unbelievably sappy). Either way, he's all over the place. His old-fashioned tracks try out tricks that have already been performed better by others, and his more modern tracks have only a hazy contact with modern trends. Some kudos should be given for his efforts to bring more classical instrumentation into 60s pop, but let's face it - the Moody Blues did it better.

It's a pleasant enough listen, don't get me wrong; my favourite songs are probably the cross- dressing rock story She's Got Medals or the nostalgia-inducing There Is a Happy Land (though the latter's a guilty pleasure, considering how sappy it is), though the gloomy poetry of Please Mr Gravedigger is also striking. It's just that, well, Bowie's still trying to work out who he is and what he wants to do here. His next album isn't a classic either, but at it least had some kind of direction and focus.