David Bowie

Bowie somehow brilliantly balances sleek alternative pop ("Fashion" and "Ashes to Ashes") with jagged, brittle and often madly paranoid art rock. The guitar buzz on this album still has the power to astound while the lyrics, (with the exception of the fragilely optimistic "Up the Hill Backwards") speak of hopes dashed in a world gone horribly wrong.

In Nicholas Roeg's movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, there's a scene in which David Bowie,
playing a vulnerable extraterrestrial visitor, intently watches the ritualized, larger-than-life
violence of a Kabuki performance. That scene--the way Bowie is at first transfixed and
then darts abruptly away, as if repulsed, satiated and sufficiently instructed --- keeps
coming to mind while listening to Scary Monsters. Like the character in The Man ... More >

No concepts, no stylistic excursions, no avant collaborations--this songbook may be the most conventional album he's ever put his name on. Vocally it can be hard to take--if "Teenage Wildlife" parodies his chanteur mode on purpose the joke's not worth the pain, and if you think Tom Verlaine can't sing, check out "Kingdom Come"--though anyone vaguely interested has already made peace with that. Lyrically it's too facile as usual, though the one about Major Tom's jones gets me every time. And musically, it apotheosizes his checkered past, bringing you up short with a tune you'd forgotten you remembered or a sonic that scrunches your shoulders or a beat that keeps you on your feet when your coccyx is moaning sit down. (Grade - B+)