Is THE LODGER David Bowie's best record?

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drc000/c004/ c00453h43v6.jpg

I WILL NOT DENIED HERE!! YOU MUST ARGUE YR DISSENT or RETIRE BY DEF'N BESTED!!

"Boys Keep Swinging" = freaking genius "D.J." = catchy danceable genius "Yassassin" = incredible total genius "Red Sails" = major genius "Look Back in Anger" = ASTONISHING GENIUS

Diamond Dogs is a comparative pittance. Ziggy is a joke. Low is half-finished. Station to Station is close but no cigar. Scary Monsters is a mis-step. Aladdin Sane . . . well, almost. But Lodger is just untouchable.

It is also unfairly overlooked billy dods, but I think the production/guitar sound on SM is v. extremely brittle and monochromatic and hard to get past. And the sleeve is INCREDIBLY UTTERLY TERRIBLE SURELY?

Hmm...the one I listen to most often remains "Heroes" -- "Sons of the Silent Age," there's yer brilliance right there, that chorus, that queasy sax! Genius. "Joooooooooooooe THE LION!" I could go on.

But Lodger for all the aforementioned reasons is right on up there. Those crazy rhythms, oh yes, the way the guitars whine and buzz through the "Look Back in Anger" arrangement and the way Bowie sings "The speaker was an angel..." How "Red Money" revamps Iggy not Ziggy, how "Red Sails" just seems to immediately call to mind a hyperactive Kate Bush video from four years in the future...I could also go on.

taking sides: george murray vs gail ann dorsey

(*this is not a joke.)

Ned, it's good to know Petey Gabriel is always lurking just below the level of your conscious mind.

I love it to death, although I hear the rot of 'Tonight' and 'Never Let Me Down' setting in with the Iggy re-annexation strategy of 'Red Money', which is far inferior to 'Sister Midnight'.

'Scary Monsters' was a disappointment for me at the time (I now love Side 1) because it seemed calculatedly populist and somewhat anti-modernist. Then we got Chic and 'David Bowie Straight', and everything after that was a disappointment, so you got used to it. I've just read the lyrics to his new single, and it seems like more of the same thing, but I don't really expect much any more, sigh.

He is still the most beautiful, wise and charming man on the planet, muse or no muse.

lodger breaks the morbid depression of side-2-low and the depressed fucked-up mess that is heroes

lodger creeps up on the listener -- no concessions to kiddy rock'n'roll -- instead elimination of lyrical abiguity (finally) and instrumental arrangement to match these real songs -- an adult record

maybe even honest ? what with bowie squeezed behind a shop window on the cover -- i can do without the "i'm an international phenomena" thing, though i guess that is central

scary monsters seemss a stab in the same direction but more attempt to rock and more of the old "hey i'm weird" theatrics -- at least he tries a whole lot of different approaches with different musos, so i approach monsters on a song by song basis whereas lodger stands up as an album

the only decent "concept album" from a guy who supposedly is the concept album guy -- it's as if bowie grew up here -- pity the creative run was so brief -- both monsters and lodger he'd kind of learnt to work with eno and then with others without letting them dominate

yeah, pity about all the rest -- let's face it -- either bowie is a bygone '70s culture thing since the cracks were showing by the '80s, or these few late '70s records were the best a guy with resouces and advice to burn could come up with in his 35 years as rock star

Heh. "BABY BABY BABY I'll never let you go..."

I think "Outside" and "Earthling" are as good as "Lodger." His best album is "Station to Station."

I think I'm w/ mark s. The guitar lover in me will always love Man Who Sold the World, but in my heart of hearts I know Lodger is his best. Many good points made above, mark re DB's singing, dave re "Boys Keep Swinging" (Belew's studio debut! already sounding like Fripp), Momus re the travelogue quality. The imaginative syncretisms really make this one stand out. I like the way he slides in more classicist elements as well - like the way the piano softly, briefly switches to double time on the chorus to "Fantastic Voyage" (probably my favorite Bowie song), or the New Orleans bass line under the chorus of "Boys Keep Swinging".

Awesome record.

agreed, lol

I've almost never been interested in a remaster even when it's objectively "better" or "truer to the original intent" or even "fixed a clearly fucked up original release" of anything that I've grown up with.

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same, although there have been exceptions. Not that remixes/remasters can't be revelatory, but generally an album as originally released is "the original" for me.

There are remasters that I have thanked the stars above for and ones I've abhorred. With Bowie, I have to say I'm glad i dug around the Hoffman board on that subject because for the most part I like the original wave of cd masterings better than the ryko and WAY better than the emi remasters. Have not sufficiently listened to the recent box set series

I bought the ‘ANCIANT’ box, volume drop on “Horoes” aside i’ve not noticed anything that was problematic for me. Like the sound of the new master of ‘Low’ and the new mix of ‘Lodger’, but these are not albums I have long held relationships with/ impressions of, plus I’ve not been doing a/b comparisons on every note.

Hoffmann-y Post Of The Day: The German RCA versions of The Berlin Trilogy are beeeeeyooootiful. Nothing's boosted or lowered, sound clear and powerful when they need to.

is that vinyl or CD?

CD

Re: The Lodger, I do like it when '60s musicians call Cream "The Cream."

Xpost yes those are the ones I'm referring to. All you have to do is turn up the volume level and they blaze to life.

lodger is a much better title than "the lodger", the former is more mysterious.. more jamais vu

i have about zero interest in people going back and remixing old stuff, unless it was never released or properly mixed in the first place... even then it depends.

some of the best bowie back up vocals on this song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfvn-jzJiAA

very quick first impression on a very quick cursory listen comparing both the lodgers on apple music...some cases the newfound bass (allowance for bass) makes things seem muddier, but when it works it makes it sound fresh and powerful.

those poor, poor Ryko bonus tracks... nowhere to be found on this new box

absolutely brutal comments regarding sound quality here:

https://www.discogs.com/David-Bowie-A-New-Career-In-A-New-Town-1977-1982/master/1244579

Haha holy shit I literally cannot believe this got soundchecked. There is no WAY someone checked the files and said "yes the first re-release of these albums in decades and this is how I want it to sound"

they cut ordinary 96/24 overcompressed files on vinyl and call it original master tapes, funny guys.

Yeah was reading about it here http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/parlophone-hold-its-hands-up-to-bowie-box-heroes-issue-and-takes-action/ Fair play to Parlophone for agreeing to replace the discs, but how nobody thought that the 'volume drop' was acceptable on Bowie's signature song on a prestige box set is astonishing.

https://open.spotify.com/track/5dodh7Bi4YhWxs9LxwjnYO about 2'48

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_jx5sVQ32s about 0'37

Record companies kinda need to stop using mastering engineers that have been listening to loud music in rooms since 1970

Having heard the new Lodger mix, I think I'll just stick woth the original - Visconti did a great job on Blackstar, but the original mix of Lodger suits the record.

Having raved about Shearwater's song-by-song cover of this album upthread, I just wanted to give a heads up that they are playing the whole Berlin trilogy live over three nights in NYC next month, with special guest Carlos Alomar!

lol i misread that as bongwater for a moment

No but “African Night Flight” is the best track of the Berlin Trilogy.

I still very much see this period of Bowie music as a five album run (Station to Station to Scary Monsters) rather than as a trilogy.

and I'd rank 'em Station to Station = Low > Lodger > "Heroes" > Scary Monsters, but they're all excellent really.

I think Lodger was about the first current Bowie I was aware of came out when i was 11 or 12 and I know I got the Fantastic Voyage single sometime roughly around it being current, came from a newsagent 7" rack so not sure how much of a lag there was.

& my elder brother was getting heavily into Bowie sometime around then. So I was probably hearing his back catalogue from my brother's room around the time.
Do like a lot of it.

Though I think my getting more into Bowie was much longer delayed. & the first records I was buying were the mod era stuff and Images both a couple of years later.

I remember the video for Boys Keep Swinging being on TOTP which I assume must have been current to the lp. Don't remember seeing Heroes video current to it being out.
& while I can remember the Sweet being played at the time they were around in the early 70s not sure about Bowie. & i think I was watching TOTP throughout the 70s

Excellent piece on Boys Keep Swinging and the genesis of the Ryko bonus track, I Pray, Olé:

An interesting read on Boys Keep Swinging and the mystery of I Pray Olehttps://t.co/tL7dhUqWKV

— Crayon to Crayon (@CrayonToCrayon) August 16, 2019

And since my post was a lame retread of the tweet, I will add that there is some good stuff w Visconti (and Gabrels pissing on Visconti) in there.

"I Pray Ole" is a wee thing, not terrible. Its interesting how Bowie gets credit for playing all guitars.

I love that literally nobody seems to have any idea where it came from.

Another interesting factoid in that article: Bowie recorded his vocal for Some Are, from the Ryko issue of Low, in 1991. That one sounds pretty consistent with the rest of Bowie’s vocals from 1976.

Has Abdulmajid’s vintage ever been confirmed? To my ears, it’s never really sounded like any of the tracks from the Berlin period.

Apropos of nothing, I kind of like the Look Back in Anger Bowie did with Gabrels.

Was listening to the ‘stalking time for the moonboys’ podcast and David Baddiel tore into ‘African Night Flight’ saying how bad he thought it was but it’s possibly my fave thing on it...is it held in such low esteem?

not by me

The handful of my friends and I that own the album would rate it quite highly. Not sure how you'd even determine the consensus view.

that song rules, wtf

lads, lads, it's David Baddiel

baddiel is wrong abt everything ever and also the lodger is david bowie's best record

so I pack a bag
and move on

Not sure how you'd even determine the consensus view.

It's true, ILM hasn't polled the album yet apparently.

!!!

get in here, goons

Best track on David Bowie's LODGER album

Jake Shears on Lodger in his (great) Baker's Dozen on the Quietus.

David Bowie - Lodger
My three favourite Bowie albums are Lodger, Scary Monsters and Let’s Dance, and they came out in that succession. I got Lodger on cassette when I was eight and just became completely obsessed with it and listened to over and over again - it’s a record that I never get sick of. You can find some weird writing about Lodger where people can be dismissive of it - I don’t understand that at all. It opens with ‘Fantastic Voyage’ which is probably in my top three favourite David Bowie songs, ‘African Night Flight’ is so hectic and strange, and ‘DJ’ was the big single from this and ‘Look Back In Anger’ too, and ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ was the first – other than hearing Frankie Goes To Hollywood in the back of my mom’s car radio – thing that felt queer to me. ‘Relax’ had a queer energy but ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ felt almost more explicit to me, with that line “other boys check you out” and “you’ll get your share when you’re a boy’”

jake shears otm

It's not my favorite Bowie album, but the people whose favorite Bowie album it is are my favorite people

'Fantastic Voyage' and 'Boys Keep Swinging' famously have the same chord sequences... and perhaps inevitably, someone has put the vocals of one to the backing track of the other and vice versa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-7skUaqnu0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdGic7nE6Kc

Didn't expect much of these, and the first one just sounds like a plodding version of Boys - nothing unexpected really happens as a result of the switch - but the second one is great, principally because of the way the bassline rubs up against the lyrics.

Actually I kind of love them both. Interesting!

The laid back feel given to the vocals for 'Boys Keep Swinging' makes the lies of the lyrics more obvious - Bowie as laconic con-man selling you a heteronormative male fantasy. Kind of like Vendice Partners in a booth at the back of a cocktail bar. Maybe nearby there's Neil Tennant's character from 'Opportunities'?
The sped up vocals for 'Fantastic Voyage' are interesting, lending a more urgent feel to the lyrics. Doesn't mesh quite as well with the backing track though. It almost sounds like a punk song.

Blur's "M.O.R." uses the same chord progression (and had to give credit to Bowie and Eno), would be interesting to hear those vocals over these backing tracks.

ok now where's one with both vocal tracks at the same time

Just play the original backing track song simultaneously with the remix!

Duh