Is THE LODGER David Bowie's best record?

(tho i think glass when he started might have tried something this quick)

THE HINTERLAND
THE HINTERLAND

I'M GONNA SAIL TO THE HINTERLAND

it's fa-fa fa-fa-fa
fa-fa-far away
it's a fa-fa fa-fa-fa fa-da da-da-da

que Awesome Guitar Solo

I was reading my comments from '05 above. I think maybe I've been a little wrong about Bowie, and perhaps what made me rethink was Seu Jorge doing early Bowie in Life Aquatic. I probably need a legion of leggy unpaid interns to really sort it out, but I have more of a jones these days for the Bowie just pre-Iggy and the Stardust Cowboy or whatever that one was. OK, I know it, and parts of that record are so great, actually, and it was the one that tipped him off into that dress-up phase he needed to really make it. Still think that record is sort of bad in the manner of those Kinks records from the same era, those rock operettas. Still like some of the riffs on the Kinks stuff and Bowie, though, so mixed feelings, because it's stupid to hate the '70s for its excesses. So these days really like Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory. I mean I'd never really listened to any of those all the way through, I was way more into Eno and Roxy because I deemed them less excessive. But I still love Lodger, whose overall tone seems unique.

God Yassassin is good.

One of these days, one of these days, gotta get a word through one of these days

Gotta get a word to Elizabeth's father.

Also amazing and very unique.

Hey ho wish me well

I always hated Seu Jorge with a passion btw.

Really? He seems like the epitome of inoffensive to me. Maybe that's why.

It was just irritating how anyone was paying attention to something so mediocre and unremarkable for an entire year.

I can't believe how much "African Night Flight" sounds like a Bone Thugs-N-Harmony song.

My stepfather looks just like David Bowie
But he hates David Bowie
I think Bowie's cool
I think Lodger rules
And my stepdad's a fool!

I think "Lodger" starts out much stronger than it ends. But yeah the first dozen or so tracks are unstoppable.

There's only ten songs!

The last two tracks aren't that great, but the rest is fantastic.

LOL heh you're right! only ten songs!

Sister Midnight is just soooo badass, it's hard to hear "Red Money" and not think of it....

This is an awesome beast of a record.

Whether it's the best of the trilogy, I'm not sure -- but for whatever reason, it's the one I've listened to the most. By far.

I can't believe how much "African Night Flight" sounds like a Bone Thugs-N-Harmony song.

― dreamsonvhs, Saturday, November 27, 2010 5:02 PM

this one has grown the most for me — side two of Low and Heroes tend to bore me now

Huh, I quoted Yassassin yesterday with the same wrong/right punctuation + capitalisation as one J0hn some seven years ago.
Lodger is my 2nd favourite Bowie album; favourite is Outside.
Bowie's singing in the 90s got really, really gorgeous

It is weird how I always perceived this as a dud relative to the other two. Then I actually heard it and wow what a record

I listened to hunky dory today for the first time in years. There being no bad songs on it makes it a sure contender for best Bowie, although 'Stay' from station to station is reason alone to put that album above it.

Hunky Dory is great, the only bad song is the cover
I do not understand the cult of Low

first side is awesome

side two of Low and Heroes tend to bore me now

― corey, Sunday, 13 March 2011 15:35 (Yesterday)

wau

Lately I've been taken with the '88 rerecording of "Look Back in Anger," featuring a drum machine, ominous sound effects, and the debut of Reeves Gabrels. To me it makes the Tin Machine albums redundant. This is what they should have sounded like: stolid, thick, noisy.

With La La La Human Steps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VEQPVY_uxM&feature=related

I always liked "Look Back in Anger" redux. It serves a similar purpose to those scattered late-period Police remakes, successfully recasting old songs in contemporary settings that, yes, date them worse than the originals but still at least have the courage of their convictions.

("Look Back In Anger," incidentally, one of only a handful of formal - that is, credited - Brian Eno co-writes with classic collaborators, joining the likes of "Heroes" and "Once in a Lifetime")

Though I like Bowie, I always thought Mark Prindle's take on him was really funny (and fairly accurate):

"He has a knack for playing a really generic melody, then changing it ever so slightly so that it sounds ugly, wrong and shitty. He has always struck me as an extremely normal person of average intelligence who has been told over and over again that he is a genius so he goes out of his way to dress like a clown and create pretentious "art" that hardly ever rises above generic rock, characterized by unexpected shifts into odd, unappealing chord sequences and topped by a nothing British bland voice of nothingness"

xp "Look back in anger" redux is the best of the reduxes, for sure

Mark Prindle's take on this subject is useless to me and not funny at all

Yes, this was a nice discovery (via Pushing Ahead of the Dame, of course). Love the texture & spaciousness of the remake. Shame it couldn't be reproduced in the studio (by choice or inability?). On (the first) record Bowie/TM tries to sound stolid, which is impossible.

(Trivia: I recognize(d) the blonde dancer from the video Alfred posted from the "Fame '90" video)

I like Christgau's take: "I used to think Bowie was middlebrow, but now I'd prefer to call him post-middlebrow--a habitue of prematurely abandoned modernist space."

Anyway his most rabid fans do him no favors, as I learned when I tousled with a few on the Bowie Blog a few months ago.

Some of his most rabid fans are also his most savage critics. Christgau's take is perfect

yep

Another one of those where their fans "know best"...

Thanks for the video, Alfred.

what the hell does "habitue of prematurely abandoned modernist space" mean?

is that another way of saying his ideas are half-finished?

it means he has a taste for cool furniture and interior design

lol, but really: he's saying that the guy has made a career of collaborating with last year's breakout art-star

Station To Station will always be Bowie's best album for me, but Lodger is definitely in my Top 3 favourites of his.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FODvjYoVEi8

'Look Back In Anger' just popped up on shuffle-play... man, this song never gets old. Fabulous drumming, too!

Another formal Eno co-write, too.

Red Sails to Repetition = one of the great album stretches of the 70s

It's definitely a great stretch of tracks, but I kinda feel that way about the whole album... even 'Red Money'! Definitely fair to say that this is one of my favourite Bowie LP's alongside Station To Station and Low.

never heard this one before this week, i'm astounded at what an amazing record could have been just sitting there in the world all this time when i could have loved it any number of years ago—like, any bowie discontent of my own aside, i would have been primed for it.

on another thread someone posted owen p saying bowie was a grating, irritating singer, which i definitely feel has merit for a lot of his records, not always but certainly in consistent parts of his technique that one just has to accept as part of his thing. so one thing i noticed right away about this record is that he's still doing *most* everything that he usually does as a vocalist, but in the context of the record the grating and irritating aspects seem to have been smoothed down or eliminated. which given that he often sounds like he's singing on an eno record or sometimes is straight up imitating david byrne, is itself interesting. maybe like he leaned slightly toward these models which were not all that far apart from his usual singing in the first place, but which grounded it somehow.

there are even parts where he just sounds like he's actually singing all out, mannerisms dropped.