Is THE LODGER David Bowie's best record?

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.

this album is just called "lodger" not "the lodger"

The other's a Hitchock silent starring a famous Welsh actor, no?

You are welcome here, artcle police

yeah this record is awesome -- going through a complete discography play this week, and so far, it's pretty easily my favorite

"Look Back in Anger" may be his most rocking track, maybe my favorite deep cut. This album also has "Fantastic Voyage" and "Move On," two other favorite deep cuts. And then "DJ" and "Boys" are both awesome cuts, too, obviously. Lots of great stuff. I'd say the anarchy of this album is really appealing, but "Scary Monsters" is a tad sharper for all its superficial similarities.

Also "Yassassin' and 'African Night Flight'.

I like the first song a lot, though the MO of the latter seems way more Eno than Bowie (nothing wrong with that). Mentioned above, but Eno gets co-write credit on most of this disc,

Always wanted to start a thread about songs like 'African Night Flight' and Joni Mitchell's 'The Jungle Line' in which big rock artists go 'exotic'.

Brian Eno – synthesizers, ambient drone, prepared piano, cricket menace, guitar treatments, horse trumpet, eroica horn, piano, backing vocals

"African Night Flight" is the one featuring "cricket menace."

"Red Sails", you guys.

... it's "Monza" by Harmonia with Bowie on vocals, Adrian Belew on guitar. That'll do for me.

i really love this record and it is definitely my favourite when I am listening to it and shouting about THE HINTERLAND and THUNDER OCEAN.

FAFAFAFAFAFAFA

my favorite Bowie album

octave jump on "Move On" -- "somewhere someone's calling me / when the chips are downnnnnnnnn" = LOVE

this is my favorite of the 'berlin trilogy'

AYA
OOH
AYA
OOH

Cyprus is my island

in fan voyage love how he takes that trailing interrogative in "we'll never say anything nice again, will we?" - it should just hang loose at the end there, an afterthought - but he just fucking hits it & pushes it
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

yes

I've been playing all my Bowie songs on random this week and Move On practically lept from the speakers. That is a titanic song.

"All the Young Dudes" backwards!

Is that what the weird background vocals are? Another "how did he do that" riddle solved. Now if I can only figure out what musical instrument is producing that crazy sound during the verses of TVC15.

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

Well, I'll be damned.