A
50-year-old David Bowie--the Thin Grey Duke--visits upon us an otherworldly
album that blends up-to-the-minute electronica with good old-fashioned
popcraft.
Pop's
newest cutting edge isn't coming from its young. It's emerging from a
growing number of seasoned artists who, after losing their muses, managed
to snatch them back at the waning age of 50. Eric Clapton didn't get up the
nerve to make his first pure blues album until he was facing down the Big
Five-O with 1994's From the Cradle. At 51, Joni Mitchell released Turbulent
Indigo (1994), her most searching album since 1976's Hejira. And now, one
month after David Bowie blew out 50 candles, he's unveiling his first
smart, exciting, and...well, Bowie-esque record since Scary Monsters more
than16 years ago.
The
long stall only makes this payoff that much sweeter. On Earthling
(Virgin) Bowie at last locates a mean between the two treacherous paths
that threw his career off course. If his mid-'80s records (Lets
Dance, Never Let Me Down) cynically cashed in
on bland pop, his subsequent output veered too far in the direction of
uncompromising "art." From his tin-eared late-'80s band Tin
Machine to his cockamamy 1995 concept album Outside,
Bowie proved that it isn't enough to write songs some grudgingly admire; he
should write music some pine to hear.
Bowie
accomplishes that on Earthling--an album as playable as it
is startling. To his credit, he avoids recycling sounds from his golden
years (1971-80). Instead, he finds their current equivalents. Bowie seeks
inspiration in "electronica," that clutch of underground dance
rhythms now affecting the mainstream, bridging the fury of techno, the
swish of drum-and-bass, and the whir of ambient music. Just as 1975's Young
Americans reconfigured the "new" rhythms of disco into Bowie's
own chic pop, Earthling rewires electronica for his
more recent take on industrial rock.
"Little
Wonder" kicks off the album with the most alarming
opening volley heard on a record in some time--a careening whine of guitars
skidding into a wall of blood- smattered synths. Sampling the sounds of
chugging trains, bleating whistles, and collapsing metal, Bowie's music
mines every ear-piercing shriek missed by Ministry six years ago. Crucial
credit for this should go to guitarist and Bowie loyalist Reeves
Gabrels. While his earlier collaborations with Bowie veered
into the indulgent and ugly, here their racket invigorates. Gabrels has
found a way to marry the squealing thrash of a Steve Vai to the
architectural sweep of a Robert Fripp.
The
electronica beats give Gabrels' guitar shards bracing movement. As dance
subgenres go, techno and drum-and-bass represent the fastest styles yet
invented, making this, by definition, Bowie's briskest album. A sprint of
slapping snare drums and shimmering cymbals brightens nearly every track.
If
such sounds give Bowie a claim to the future, his melodies connect him to
the past. He's writing tunes that catch the ear again. Songs like "Seven
Years In Tibet" and "Looking For Satellites"
recall the fluid psychedelia of Hunky Dory.
You'll find melodies you can hum even amid the album's wildest clamor.
Bowie's
words side with the assault. At their most jarring, he indulges a
technique, learned from William Burroughs, of splicing random words together.
But he also risks direct statements, like an attack on cultural imperialism
in "I'm Afraid Of Americans," or a send-up of
people who fear the unknown in "Law (Earthling On Fire)."
The folly of feigning control serves as the album's recurring theme, something
well suited to Bowie's age.
If
such themes ground Bowie, another new release paints him in more arty
terms. Composer Phillip Glass has reworked six pieces from Bowie's (and
Brian Eno's) 1977 album Heroes into a HEROES
SYMPHONY (Point Music). In 1993, Glass did the same thing with
Bowie's Low. His version of Heroes
previously accompanied a dance piece by choreographer Twyla Tharp, but even
without Tharp's visual cues the symphony has a chilling Germanic
simplicity. Bowie's old synthetic mood pieces gain a new richness and
severity told through Glass' swelling orchestra.
It's
juicy meat for Bowie scholars, but, ironically, his pop work holds greater
substance. Not only does Earthling help him reconnect with the
rock zeitgeist, it counts Bowie among those artists--like Clapton,
Mitchell, and Neil Young--who are pushing the age barrier of a vital pop
career. For that, they should all be called heroes. Earthling: A
Heroes Symphony:B
Jim Farber
America
On-Line