Reality

CD Only

1          New Killer Star, 4:40

2          Pablo Picasso, 4:05

3          Never Get Old, 4:24

4          The Loneliest Guy, 4:11

5          Looking For Water, 3:28

6          She’ll Drive The Big Car, 4:35

7          Days, 3:18

8          Fall Dog Bombs The Moon, 4:04

9          Try Some, Buy Some, 4:24

10        Reality, 4:23

11        Bring Me The Disco King, 7:45

 

Bonus Tracks (On Bonus CD)

12        Fly, 4:10

13        Queen Of All The Tarts (Overture), 2:53

14        Rebel Rebel, 3:10

 

Bonus Tracks (On Tour Edition)

16        Waterloo Sunset, 3:25

 

Recorded:               Looking Glass Studios, New York, USA

(Summer 2003)

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

                               baritone sax, percussion, synths

                               Gerry Leonard, guitar

                               Earl Slick, guitar

                               Mark Plati, bass, guitar

                               Sterling Campbell, drums

                               Mike Garson, piano

                               Gail Ann Dorsey, backing vocals

                               Catherine Russell, backing vocals

                               Matt Chamberlain, drums on Bring Me The Disco King and Fly

                               Tony Visconti, bass, keyboards, backing vocals on Fly

                               David Torn, guitar on Fly

                               Carlos Alomar, guitar on Fly

                               Mario McNulty, additional percussion and drums on

                               Fall Dog Bombs The Moon

                               Bill Jenkins, acoustic piano on The Loneliest Guy

Producer:               David Bowie & Tony Visconti

Released:               15 September 2003

Label:                     ISO/Columbia COL 512555

The hazard of being David Bowie in 2003, and having influenced everyone worth influencing in living memory, is that when you open your new album with a track like "New Killer Star", rather than sounding like your own "Fashion", instead it sounds like "Girls And Boys" by Blur. What Bowie has realised, it seems, is that if everyone else is allowed to reference his backcat, he may as well have a piece of the fun too. Whereas his previous effort, the much-lauded Heathen, tried perhaps a little too hard to be everyone's idea of a classic Bowie album, Reality is an altogether more playful take on his past (and present). The cover of Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso" ("Well some people try to pick up girls, they get called assholes/This never happened to Pablo Picasso") is comically callous in a way Bowie hasn't been since Scary Monsters. Conversely, "Bring Me The Disco King" and "The Loneliest Guy" are as beautifully lost and world-weary as he's sounded since Low, an intelligent middle-aged man's alienated and fascinated view of modern life. Which is all we can possibly expect.

 

SP

The Sunday Independent, 7 Sept 2003