hours…

CD Only

1          Thursday’s Child, 5:24

2          Something In The Air, 5:46

3          Survive, 4:11

4          If I’m Dreaming My Life, 7:04

5          Seven, 4:04

6          What’s Really Happening, 4:10

7          The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell, 4:40

8          New Angels Of Promise, 4:35

9          Brilliant Adventure, 1:54

10        The Dreamers, 5:14

 

CD2

(On Digibook 2CD re-release 2004, ISO / Columbia 511936 9)

11        Thursday’s Child (Rock Mix), 4:24

12        Thursday’s Child (Omikron Version), 5:35

13        Something In The Air (American Psycho Remix), 6:03

14        Survive (Marius De Vries Mix), 4:18

15        Seven (Demo Version), 4:05

16        Seven (Marius De Vries Mix), 4:34

17        Seven (Beck Mix 1), 3:44

18        Seven (Beck Mix 2), 5:13

19        The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell (Edit), 3:59

20        The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell (Stigmata Film Version), 4:49

21        The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell (Stigmata Film Only Version),

           4:00

22        New Angels Of Promise (Omikron Version), 4:38

23        The Dreamers (Omikron Version), 5:43

24        1917, 3:27

25        We Shall Go To Town, 3:54

26        We All Go Through, 4:07

27        No One Calls, 3:50

 

Recorded:               Seaview Studios, Bermuda

                               Looking Glass Studios, New York, USA

                               Chung King Studios, New York, USA

(March 1999 – May 1999)

Musicians:              David Bowie, vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards,

                               Roland 707 drum programming

                               Reeves Gabrels, guitars, drum loops, synth and drum

                               programming

                               Mark Plati, bass, guitar, synth and drum programming,

                               mellotron (Survive)

                               Mike Levesque, drums

                               Sterling Campbell, drums (Seven, New Angels Of Promise,

                               The Dreamers))

                               Chris Haskett, guitar (If I’m Dreaming My Life)

                               Everett Bradley, percussion (Seven)

                               Marcus Salisbury, bass (New Angels Of Promise)

                               Holly Palmer, backing vocals (Thursday’s Child)

Producers:              David Bowie, Reeves Gabrels

Released:               4 October 1999

Label:                     Virgin CDV 2900

 

One wonders just what David Bowie expects to find on the Internet. www.GucciPourHome.com? www.burroughsianlyriculike.com? or possibly www.rentacredpopstarmate.co.uk?

Or perhaps the great man is convinced that there is some great secret residing deep within cyberspace which will eventually provide the elixir of creative rebirth. Hence this record will be available on the Internet a week before CD, and there is also the quite chilling prospect of he and his band appearing in a PC computer game called (oh yes indeed) Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Not just a new David Bowie album, but cybre-gifts for a new generation! Really Dad, you shouldn't have.

But wait! It seems the fearless über - pseud warrior of the future has got back in touch with ground control. Why, some this sounds almost (gasp) old-fashioned!

New single 'Thursday's Child' sets the tone, with sir David in wistful, contemplative, nay downright melancholy mood. In fact, he sounds alarmingly like Stuart Staples from the tindersticks, all fragile maudlin vibrato, as he croons about how, "All of my life I tried so hard doing my best with what I had... maybe I'm born right out of my time". Is this earth David Bowie we're talking about here? Well, maybe it is for once. And it makes for quite splendid, sweeping stuff, somewhere between 'Ashes To Ashes' and Louis Armstrong's 'We Have All The Time In The World'. There's no sign of the zeitgeist-chasing menopausal self-consciousness, naff postmodernism or sci-fi pretension we've come to expect.

Alas, the rest of this album is a pale imitation of the same moody magnificence. 'If I'm Dreaming My Life' has a certain dramatic presence and the echo of an epic tune, and 'Something In The Air' has a stuttery, nervously emotional grace to it, but elsewhere there's lots of bittersweet refelctions, minor chords and emotional atmospherics, but precious few memorable melodies. Meanwhile, every so often he attempts his old faux-Cockney voice or inserts some space noise, but it only serves, as ever of late, to make him look like mutton dressed as ham.

The one other exception to that malaise is 'The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell', which writhes around a chugging designer metal riff and a glammy swagger you've already heard this man pull off in years.

Otherwise, after all the future-hugging ideas and innovation-hungry experiments that have crippled Bowie's records in the 90's, 'Hours...' fails not through pretention, over-ambition or trying to be down with the kids, but through time-honoured mediocre songwriting. I think that's what they call irony. Let's hope it doesn't cath on.

 

Johnny Cigarette

New Musical Express