David Bowie - the last thirty years

lucas wrote: Stool Man wrote: What's indus rock?  Abbreviation of industrial? indus rock = industrial rock

But only in French.

^Yes shame on you. 

I’m a bit like Linus here – I sort of lost interest in Bowie after Let’s Dance (which is OK, but a lot weaker than Scary Monsters imo). 1st Outside was a very pleasant surprise, and Bowie looked so young and enthusiastic on the tour. But I can’t vote since there are too many albums I never really cared to listen to.

ole-the-first wrote: Guldbamsen wrote: Earthling for me. I really don't get the rating it has here on PA Same here. Melodically Earthling is fairly close to perfection: 'Battle for Britain (The Letter)' and 'Dead Man Walking' are amongst my favourite Bowie songs, 'Seven Years in Tibet' contains a very nice jazzy atmosphere. The production in quite excellent too, it just doesn't sound like some wanted it to be, but heck, time ain't standing still, Bowie couldn't play 'Changes' for 25 years without any changes.

Well, you were very careful to mention only the better songs. I would hardly call stuff like "The Last Thing You Should Do" or "Law (Earthlings on Fire)" melodic at all (and I hate that random-words "chorus" that is repeated ad nauseam in "Looking for Satellites", but that's a different story). I mean, I like some of the stuff on the album ("Dead Man Walking", "Seven Years in Tibet", "I'm Afraid of Americans" and even "Little Wonder" a bit), but overall I think it's fairly crass and contrived. Kind of like Bowie took some regular songs of varying quality and slapped some drum'n'bass rhythms over it in an attempt to stay hip. And this is coming from somebody who thinks Outside is one of his best albums.

There are worse Bowie albums though. Like Hours, whose rather positive reception on PA absolutely puzzles me considering it's much further away from prog than the preceding few albums. I think it's very mediocre - not because of the low prog concentration, I couldn't care less about that - but because I can find only two good tracks on it: "Thursday's Child", which is recorded like a schmaltzy adult contemporary ballad, but you can't deny that melody, and "Brilliant Adventure". The rest suffers from horrible singing (listen to the flaccid, tone-deaf vocals on "Survive" and "Seven" or the caterwauling on "What's Really Happening?") and extremely dull songwriting. There are some tracks I could theoretically get behind: "Something in the Air" starts off with a similar mood as "Seven Years in Tibet", and although it lacks the melody, I do find some entertainment in Bowie disoriented vocals (the way he sings "I know you hold your head up high" in the second chorus is brilliant) and the alien-like thing that accompanies him. "If I'm Dreaming My Life" is really dull, uneventful and overlong, but I guess it's basically pleasant. And "The Dreamers" might struggle for a majesty that isn't there, but I do enjoy the overdriven vocals in the verse ("shallow man"). As for the rest, especially that stretch from "Seven" to "New Angels of Promise", it's among the worst I have heard from Bowie. And two good tracks, three average ones and five awful ones just don't make even a decent album.

Triggered by the new album, I've recently been going through the whole Bowie catalog again, especially the post-Scary Monsters stuff which I was only partially acquainted with. On the whole it's been uneven, and sadly the better albums are the ones I had already heard. But still, it was interesting to delve into even the weaker albums. I should write some reviews when I have the time.

Edit: By the way, just today I found a concert recording on Youtube from a 1996 appearance at the German Loreley Festival that I had on CD as a kid. In retrospect it's a pretty dismal concert (the bass is almost completely inaudible, Reeves Gabrels is more interested in noisemaking than playing the actual guitar riffs, and as much as I like Mike Garson's piano playing, he does clutter up an already cluttered mix at times), but it was fun to hear it again because that's how I first got acquainted with these songs. There were some nice (and not so nice) surprises though, like the way the introductory guitar riff is played in "Diamond Dogs" (gives a bit of a melancholic twang to it), the head-smashingly awful Earthling-like rendition of "Andy Warhol" which turned me off a good song for years, and a similarly odd rendition of "The Man Who Sold the World" which I guess Bowie felt obligated to play again because Nirvana had made it so popular.


Edited by HarbouringTheSoul - March 23 2013 at 02:22

Heathen

humor4u1959 wrote: Bowie hasn't done a truly good album since Low and Heroes, so who cares? He's finished as an artist. He takes a 10 year break and comes out with this crap?! Forget him. He's done. And, I used to love Bowie.

Let's Dance is totally commercial and beongs to a genre of music that I usually dislike, but it has many good moments so I put it in the "good" column. The only thing of that album that I don't like is the cover of Criminal World because the original version featuring Duncan Browne is really better.

Hours for me, but The Next Day comes a close second.

^ I love the 2nd Tin Machine album...some great songs and Reeves Gabrels is a fantastic guitarist.  Anyway, went with Labyrinth