DIAMOND DOGS

This is a very interesting album from Bowie, and I have listened to it a lot recently. Here David cleverly jumps off the glam rock wagon just before it crashes, that's not to say there are no traces of glam here though. An interesting feature of this album is that Bowie plays most of the instruments himself, giving the album a more amateur sound than his previous more slick efforts. Another interesting thing is the dark, abstract, train-of-thought lyrics that give this album its unique mood.

The show kicks off with the spoken word 'Future Legend'. This serves as a prologue to this semi concept album, with Bowie talking about a post-apocalyptic city. The piece ends with the immortal lines 'This ain't rock 'n' roll, this is genocide!', before ripping straight into the title track. The title track is a fast and unforgiving rock song, with a catchy chorus, and pre-chorus, making one of Bowie's most well-crafted rock songs. Next is the song cycle consisting of 'Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)', the first part is a slowish song with a great chorus. A slow saxophone solo leads into the second part, 'Candidate', a weird song full of fast sung, abstract lyrics. the reprise of 'Sweet Thing' is much like the first and ends with a slow instrumental section. What a brilliant 8 minutes of continuous music. Things get better though, with the legendary 'Rebel Rebel'. This is a pure glam rock anthem, standing out amongst the more downbeat majority of the songs on this album. 'Rock 'n' Roll With Me' is a much overlooked ballad, filled with beautiful piano and a soaring chorus. 'We Are the Dead' is the darkest moment on this album, adorned with explicit lyrics and dark musical themes. '1984' is the first signal of the soul-oriented approach of Bowie's next album, being a wah-wah pedal filled anthem. 'Big Brother' is in a similar vein. The album ends with the deliberately repetitive 'Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family'. This ends with a noise that sounds like a broken record; surely it confused a lot of people who bought this on vinyl.

This is a strange album. No songs on it are bad, but somehow it doesn't click, It's inconsistent. I would like to give 3.5 stars, but I will round up rather than down.