Is THE LODGER David Bowie's best record?

I hear its influence on those British soul boys of the eighties (Paul Young, Mick Hucknall).

even Orange Juice.

It is its own thing, though, I agree.

"the lodger" is a much better album title than "lodger," bowie should have thanked mark s

I don't trust Visconti's mixing/engineering ear in 2016/17 however the mix on Lodger always sounded p weird to me on vinyl anyway. admittedly none of us had decent stereos when we were staying up late listening to "red money" so I'm not sure, but...skeptical of this effort.

everyone should thank me, all the time

Lodger is a weird and somewhat frustrating sounding record (I downloaded all the hoffmann-y west German mastering etc trying to find one that sounded good to me) so I'm a bit curious about the remix but yeah mostly skeptical

Interesting point about the influence on Hucknall. He was a huge fan of Eno-era Talking Heads; best exemplified by the Great Curve rip-off on the first album which amounts to a cover (Belew histrionics and all) in all but name

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr9x0lTTUi8

The new box set is enough of a shambles that its spawned a 200+ page Steve Hoffman Forum thread. I read it all. In the end, I guess I like my shitty pirate FLACs taken from pristine original vinyl.

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.