Best track on David Bowie's LODGER album

Since buying the Ryko reissue in a mall record store in fall '93, I've wondered why the hell this album was underestimated. He took the Low and Heroes experiments and distilled/refracted them into his idea of pop.

Oh, you meant ILMs concensus. I thought you meant the wider world.

It's "Boys Keep Swinging" for me, hooked me and never let go. The tongue in cheek and double meaning still makes me smile.

not gonna lie, i'm tempted to vote for yassassin.

I meant the wider world too -- the joke was that they don't know what the best song is until ILM tells them.

felt like criticism of the mix/sound was a big part of its rep? like, it is a famously "muddy" album and i suppose i hear that - although none of those late 70s albums are pristine audiophile delight or anything

(IMO and FWIW the man who sold the world is the best sounding Bowie LP)

(also, Fantastic Voyage by a long way)

"Sometimes I feel the need to move on. So I pack a bag, and move on."

Perfect song, perfect lyrics.

YAYA

OOOHHH

YAAAAYA

OOOOHH

African Night Flight....cos of David Baddiel’s dismissal of it and cos it’s so fucking malarial...

David Baddiel’s dismissal

What is this? I hate Baddiel and love African Night Flight.

This is Red Sails vs Anger for me but really imo the sequence from Sails and Repetition is one of the great album runs of the 70s

"Look back" runs away with this at top speed for me…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gCUBRFkvvU

and…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q81NoZY4Gm8&t=130s

uhh…whaa haapen?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q81NoZY4Gm8&t=130s

What is this? I hate Baddiel and love African Night Flight.

― chap

see the other Lodger thread, it was the bump that got me to make this poll

but our lives are valuable too

see the other thread anyway, it's my only good one

OK seen it now. Baddiel definitely the "Rap music... more like crap music!" type.

This did indeed tempt me to go for African Night Flight, but my clicking finger strayed to Yassassin at the last second.

I think the reason this is my favourite Bowie album is because in some way it acts like a Fall album, the way Bowie and Eno engage with pop at its least fashionable points and then allow it to be corrupted by these almost-incompatible avant garde notions...

This is kinda neat:

https://youtu.be/aUHHs0ZsPa4

I like how all over the place everyone's preferences are on this one. I voted Boys Keep Swinging because it's the catchiest tune.

oh my god that LBIA drum track, maybe the best isolation I've heard - it's just a dense texture in the mix but the timing and fills are blinding when you hear it up front. DD was ON FIRE.

Voted for "Move On". Always loved the way it (imo) starts off sounding like it's going to be a filler track to cool down after the insanity that was "African Night Flight" but then it's like "nah, let's explode into transcendence again".

I was really into "Red Sails" last time I played this.

‘Move On’ is one of my favourite Bowie vocals...makes a fairly average song absolutely compelling

omg the video with dennis davis' kid is fantastic. what's the other video you were trying to post, veronica m?

Tempted to vote for Repetition as so far it doesn't sound like anyone else is going to. Bowie did this amazing acoustic set for BBC Radio for his 50th birthday which included a great performance of the track.

Real answer is probably Fantastic Voyage though...

I like how all over the place everyone's preferences are on this one. I voted Boys Keep Swinging because it's the catchiest tune.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Saturday, 29 February 2020 21:57 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is bcz it's bowie's best LP, proof by science

"Red Sails" for me.

I've given the album two thorough listens since this poll was started and still can't decide.

^^^ learning to live with somebody's depression imo

Red Money ends the album with a woozy swagger. Love the rhythm guitar (sounds like Belew to me, yeah) amping up toward the end as Bowie attacks the vocal. You can hear him get bored with his own work, but he still throws in couple flourishes. Sister Midnight who?

I've long gravitated toward "Look Back in Anger." It's like an aggro version of one of Low's miniatures.

Fantastic Voyage for me. This album took a while to click for me. I bought it after Low and Heroes, cos "trilogy" and didn't like it. After a few years I dug it out again and - nah. A few years later I played it and boom!

I ended up voting for D.J., very curious to see the results. I shoulda made the poll close sooner, sorry.

"Move On" has always spoken to me the most on this album. Not my fave of the trilogy anyway.

Oddly enough "Red Sails" might be the first DB song I decided I liked as a wee bairn. It was on a compilation my uncle had that I I'm not sure I've ever seen again. So, maybe that!

^ I guess it must have been this. It doesn't seem especially uncommon from that evidence!

Somehow it's the only "classic era" Bowie album that I don't know at all.
I have tried to listen to it every now and then over the years but never got into it (the production ? the songs ?).
Trying again now following this thread and the love this album is getting from every one here : maybe I'll finally get it (which would be great since I would "discover" a new classic Bowie album !).

it's his best!

This was a grower for me, too. A good number of my favorite albums are those whose appeal was not immediately apparent to me.

At this point, the only element that doesn't quite gel for me is the reworking of 'Sister Midnight' into 'Red Money'.

obvious choice but the part in Boys Keep Swinging where he reaches up a register "Boys keep swinging, boys al-ways work...it....OUT!" gets me every time

to expand a bit on my choice, I find "D.J." to be the most catchy number on here along with "Boys" and it also has an undercurrent of dread, the submerging of identity into a label

at the "david bowie is" exhibit, i parked in front of the video screen showing the "dj" and "boys" videos for what seemed like hours*, mesmerized. so fucking perfect.

*it probably wasn't actually hours

Oddly enough "Red Sails" might be the first DB song I decided I liked as a wee bairn. It was on a compilation my uncle had that I I'm not sure I've ever seen again. So, maybe that!

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Wednesday, March 4, 2020 4:31 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

^ I guess it must have been this. It doesn't seem especially uncommon from that evidence!

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Wednesday, March 4, 2020 4:36 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Listening to this album right now and it's fkn awesome.

first time?

Yeah I played this the other night (first front-to-back listen in a long time) and it sounded so great.

(xp) Far from it!

I played a Box Tops compilation (also great) just before it and this was in the general vicinity.

we are all the lodger now

D.J. is probably my least favourite track, too conventional, definitely catchy though.

it's so different, to me, than the two that preceded it, which makes the "trilogy" classification interesting.

Chris O'Leary thinks the "real" Berlin trilogy is The Idiot/Low/"Heroes" & that Lodger works best as a coda to the whole Berlin period

I thought it was me who said that on ILM?

https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/sister-midnight/

Iggy Pop’s first solo record, The Idiot, is equally a David Bowie album with a guest singer/composer; Bowie co-wrote all of the songs, played many of the instruments and produced it (rather chaotically, requiring Tony Visconti to try and salvage the often over-modulated tapes at the mixing stage). Though once considered a footnote (it gets dismissed in one line in the ’90s Bowie bio Living On the Brink), it’s an essential piece of Bowie’s ’70s work, and I’d argue that the real “Berlin” trilogy is The Idiot, Low and “Heroes,” with Pop’s Lust For Life as a supplement and Lodger as an afterword.

To be pedantic about it, "Lust for Life" was recorded entirely in Berlin, "The Idiot" wasn't. "Heroes" was begun the month after "Lust For Life" was finished - again, entirely in Berlin.

They are in fact two pairs, "The Idiot"/"Low" and "Lust For Life"/"Heroes".

I've always mentally filed Lodger in a slightly different category than Low/"Heroes" (my faves of those three being Low and Lodger with "Heroes" being the one I listen to the least). Anyway, Fantastic Voyage works as a fantasting opening song so that gets my vote.

To me Lodger feels more of a precursor to the sound of Scary Monsters than a continuation of Low/Heroes.

When you're a boy
You can buy a home of your own

Bowie calling out gender discrimination in mortgage lending practices

I am The Lodger
I am where I stay

Lodger has an Eno-solo record vibe to me, an artist touring around different approaches to production. The only criticism I have about it is that the lyrics get corny. I voted "Look Back In Anger" which is arguably my favourite track of the trilogy as a whole

It's funny I always got a kind of David Byrne vibe off some of the lyrics - for instance, "Move On" reminds me of "Cities" from "Fear of Music", except "Fear of Music" was recorded and released after "Lodger", so maybe it was the other way round or maybe Eno's just the link.

Yes! I think there’s a similar vibe to Lodger and Fear of Music, and both are records I was kinda disappointed by on release that I now love.

I def can hear the artistic progression from Taking Tiger Mountain through Lodger/Fear of Music to Bush of Ghosts (& prob Remain in Light too?)

Change rather than progression imo.

Red Money is sounding awesome rn

went it Yassassin if only for having the vivid and fondest of memories of seeing/hearing Pilooski spinning it somewhere in 08. mind you might have been a re-edit, extended chorus gave it away iirc, but that's how i hear Yassassin since then, so

that sounds awesome

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this is "Red Sails" vs "Look Back In Anger" for me too. just gave them a headphones listen and "Red Sails" edged it.

both fantastic tracks but I feel there's something off in the mix. maybe it's cos I'm hearing it from a DJ perspective (and I first noticed when checking them to play out) but both tracks seem to be overdriven mids with next to no bass presence.

course this gives amazing screaming rushy sonics to "Red Sails" but I think if they could have resolved the mix both tracks would sound better in clubs n bars. as is, there's a jarring combination of thinness yet over-denseness. messing with the mix might take away something though...
thought "Red Sails" sister song "The Great Curve" fixed this, but again the bass is thinner than I expected/remembered. (I must be spoiled by boogie)

I tried several times to listen to this album following this thread and while I enjoy it more than I did previously, it (still) hasn't clicked and I fail to see how this is his best album. To me it's still one of his 70s albums I like the least (with Young Americans maybe).
That said, a good thing about revisiting this period is that another album I never particularly liked, Scary Monsters, is now one of my favourites since THAT one finally clicked !

As for this poll I think I might go with "Fantastic Voyage".

this is "Red Sails" vs "Look Back In Anger" for me too. just gave them a headphones listen and "Red Sails" edged it.

both fantastic tracks but I feel there's something off in the mix. maybe it's cos I'm hearing it from a DJ perspective (and I first noticed when checking them to play out) but both tracks seem to be overdriven mids with next to no bass presence.

course this gives amazing screaming rushy sonics to "Red Sails" but I think if they could have resolved the mix both tracks would sound better in clubs n bars. as is, there's a jarring combination of thinness yet over-denseness. messing with the mix might take away something though...
thought "Red Sails" sister song "The Great Curve" fixed this, but again the bass is thinner than I expected/remembered. (I must be spoiled by boogie)

There's also howling bum/missed note (on guitar) in "Red Sails" which they left in and I'm so glad they did.

The big honking box set from this period has a new mix of Lodger by Visconti that attempts to correct the muddiness. Apparently the original mixing was stressful and rushed and Bowie was very distracted at the time. It was his suggestion that Visconti revisit it and he approved of some of the work before he passed.

I like hearing a different version, it definitely brings out a lot of details that had been loss and sounds more balanced overall. But I like the original album so much that I never thought it needed work.

good to know! must check.

[didn’t work for Raw Power though? not sure as I didn’t spend time with the other mix(es)]

RE: the Visconti remix from a couple of years ago, it's a super fun listen, all sorts of minute details brought to the fore (the mandolins on Fantastic Voyage! The drums on Look Back in Anger!), etc etc. But it sounds super artificial in spots, there's lots of incongruous-sounding modern delay effects and such, and he utterly ruined "Move On" and "Red Sails" imho... I'll stick with the muddy, imperfect charm of the original most of the time and listen to the remix when the mood strikes.

The Raw Power tapes were fucked from the get-go.

Per Bowie: "...the most absurd situation I encountered when I was recording was the first time I worked with Iggy Pop. He wanted me to mix Raw Power, so he brought the 24-track tape in, and he put it up. He had the band on one track, lead guitar on another and him on a third. Out of 24 tracks there were just three tracks that were used. He said 'see what you can do with this'. I said, 'Jim, there's nothing to mix'. So we just pushed the vocal up and down a lot. On at least four or five songs that was the situation, including "Search and Destroy." That's got such a peculiar sound because all we did was occasionally bring the lead guitar up and take it out."

The Lodger tracks were done very well according to Visconti, it was the mixing and mastering stages that didn't go so well.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

that's a lot of votes, good work all

Didn't Bowie once pick out Repetition (0) as his favourite from this album?

I should really have tossed it a vote seeing as "Red Sails" didn't really need it. It would have been my second choice.

I think today I realised “Fantastic Voyage” may be my favourite Bowie song. Just insane and so compelling.

Lyrics confused me a little, so checked out what Pushing Ahead Of The Dame said about it, learned that it's the last song he performed live.

https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/fantastic-voyage/

A while ago I was thinking how, when I've seen writers try and tie the threads between Nite Flights and Berlin Bowie, sometimes the suggestion that African Night Flight takes it name from NF crops up. But what about the sound of the thing? Fat Mama Kick!

The vocal on "Look Back in Anger" sounds like he's doing the Walker Brothers - verse anyway.

i thought we'd agreed that for ilm purposes this album is called 'the lodger'