Somewhere close to the stratosphere (Earthling - David Bowie)

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Product:	Earthling - David Bowie
Date:	13/01/04 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Inventive, often exciting. Something new from the master

Disadvantages: occasionally misfires

I'm writing this as I find when I trawl through the Bowie ops that no one has written a piece on Earthling. I find this rather staggering but then I was the first person to ever write an op on Outside, when Bowie, at his latest gig, described fans of Outside as being his core fans (though I wasn?t there, my mate told me).

Earthling, I'm reliably informed, came about from Bowie's obsession with Trent Reznor aka Nine Inch Nails. I'm not a big NIN fan, I like Closer though the explicit lyrics perhaps detract from the song. Still, it seems about right that Bowie considers Reznor starting point. Bowie is experimenting with a harsher, some say Drum and Bass sound. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. The first moments of Little Wonder (the first track) seem more drum and guitar, which sums up the album for me. Reeves Gabrels' guitar on this is just like Gabrels? guitar on any of his albums, raw and loud, and seems to take over the bass with his own raucous musical iconoclasm.

I'll admit I have to be in the mood for this album, but when I am it's truly great. Still there is a bit of me that recognises that this is no more than Bowie having a mid-life crisis on record and sold en masse. Yet there is something wonderful about this album and it is that it is something different. So many artists rest on their laurels and never make anything interesting and different. Here Bowie admittedly tries to be contemporary and cool but he also dares to be different. He throws down the gauntlet and lets himself go with something entirely out of the ordinary. OK, it's not as great as Outside, but for those who?ve read my op will know I love Outside and genuinely believe it's something special, still this is a powerful and inventive album. So let me step aside and allow myself to walk you through the album that is Earthling.

"It's little wonder, you little wonder you," Little Wonder, the fir
st track, is perhaps the closest to drum and bass the album really gets (though see my note above re: Gabrels). That said it isn?t whatsoever. It was always my least favourite track but over time I have grown to find that I have an uneasy alliance with it. I rather enjoy this track though my music sensibilities (though no one including myself can pin them down, hell I've been listening to little better than IDM lately, my friends would be horrified) are disgusted that I do rather enjoy it. It's not a subtle track and Gabrel?s powerful guitar shrieks over Bowie's cockney accented lyrics. It's a love-hate kinda thing.

Looking For Satellites is an odd track as though I've listened to it quite a few times I can?t remember much of it beyond the title of the track being sung by Bowie and yet I can't think that I remember it being dismal. It is perhaps a little anaemic (but then I always feel that Bowie's glam-rock period is also anaemic, then picks up with Low and he really hits his stride (Fripp helps on guitar, but then when does he not?). This is not a filler in the way some of the tracks on Bowie's tedious Young Americans album are (unless you're a sax fan in which case you can listen out for Michael Brecker) but it's not a masterpiece.

The Letter is another strange one where I can hear the title of the track being sung. It is also another track that I have to be in the mood for. That is not to say that that is necessarily a bad thing. Something that is always palatable is generally going to be blandly puerile (there are times when I don't feel like listening to Bowie's Heroes, Ashes to Ashes and I'm Deranged, which is saying something (also other tracks by other artists but that's another op) and this is not bland or puerile. It?s got more of Bowie's cockney vocals and maybe a little of Aphex Twin's (or Autechre, for that matter) Drill-ness about it, but maybe that's jus
t me.

Seven Years in Tibet is the name of ?that? track that I can never remember the name of but is great. It starts off with a slow beat and Bowie's sax; then the vocals kick in before a crashing chorus. This is the first and possibly greatest track on the album (bar I'm Afraid of Americans; see later). It has a real power and sense of musicality to it. It is the apotheosis of the album. From somewhere Bowie, Gabrels and co. manage to come up with a track that moves between DnB and rock and somehow transcends it all. It is an amazingly good track for coming out of the blue. The slow burning introduction, lazy and almost jazz like, suddenly wallops you, but in a good way. This is a track to wallow in, to let it flow around you at a very loud volume. And yet that doesn't even begin to sum it. Seven Years... makes you want to jump up and dance, which when you're listening to it at work is not necessarily a good thing. The song on the other hand, is a very good thing indeed.

Telling Lies is yet another superb track with the exception of a bizarre distortion of Bowies singing 'Telling lies,' that sounds every few minutes when the song is at its most quiet. This is in many ways a brutal track, with another punishing satisfying chorus in which Bowie really gives full voice to his vocals. And yet the music behind it is no less forceful, as one should not forget Gabrel's vital contribution to this album, both as a musician and as a songwriter. This is a track of great cathartic value, like Seven Years in Tibet, because, if you agree with me, when you're tense you want something equally as tense to calm you down and not some bland chillout. You need Telling Lies, or Bach's first violin concerto. Or Sus-tayn-z, or Heavy ContrucKtion by ProjeKct 2. Music with real power and the ability to wear you out with their remarkable and sublime tension. This is that!

Last Thing you Should Do is admittedly a
s close to writing a bad song as this Bowie gets on this album. It's a torpid track that never picks up; it's waddles along and is pretty unexciting. It feels like a filler, added to make up the numbers. I usually skip it when I listen to the album. Enough said.

The title of the penultimate track it true of me: I'm Afraid of Americans. Noticeably he made a different version of this with who? Go on, guess? ok, I'll tell you: Trent Reznor. And why? It's great. Why is it great? Well, I can tell you in a word. Eno. This is Eno's only contribution to the album. It's written by the two of them. It has Bowie's power, Gabrels frantic, frenetic guitar and Eno's near prescient ability to use minute sounds at the right moments. It is a truly sublime track that is very modern without trying sound like something else. The producer of many of Bowie's 70s albums, as well as Heathen and Reality, Tony Visconti, said of Eno, that he was the only artist he knew that could keep pace with Bowie. In this he is almost true, Fripp also does. But the point is nevertheless cogent and valid. Eno is like a conduit for Bowie, he channels his creativity and brings of it something remarkable. Eno, noticeably, did the same for Fripp. Bowie and Eno complement one another beautifully and one wonders why they don't collaborate more often. A track to savour.

Law (Earthlings on Fire) is perhaps the epitome of the album, it is somehow strange to place and yet regardless of myself I rather like it. It is somewhere between rock, D'n'B, Dance and about a million other modern music genres (a terms I loathe but is annoying useful). It is longer than the other tracks on the album and in many ways the most derivative and yet it is also very much Bowie. Bowie's vocals sound like they've come from one of his own albums and not someone else's. It is a slow burn kinda song. It has a tension that doesn'
t come to a point like Telling Lies, and yet it doesn't quite seem as lost as Little Wonder. Law, moves around the middle ground. I enjoy it, perhaps because I see in it a great track in the making. In this sense maybe it truly is the epitome of the album. Here is a great album in the making and yet it falls flat here and there, also here and there, there are moments of greatness as magnificent as any of the great Bowie albums, whether it be Heroes, Lodger or Outside.

I can't go much further than my previous comment, though I feel the need to defend this album. Too many people seem to think anything after Scary Monster and before Heathen should be ignored. This is a pathetically narrow-minded argument. Let's Dance has a few good tracks. Tonight and Never Let Me Down are naff, Tin Machine is OK, Black Tie, White Noise, has some good moments, Outside, well, AMAZING, then Earthling (followed by Hours, perhaps not the most original of albums but has some great songs on, some not so great but an all round winner). This mid-nineties to before-Heathen period should not be dismissed as Bowie is doing what he has always done. He has re-defined himself, re-invented himself in a time when there was no reason for him to have any relevance whatsoever, when he could have come out on stage and repeated his 70s glory and gone no where new. He dared to be different and it didn't always pay off but there are moments when the Bowie we know and love shine through, where he transcends himself and becomes, as he is oft described as, an artist.

For those interested in purchasing this moment of dubious magnificence, you can purchase it at Amazon for a mere £6.66, (curiously, perhaps there is something satanic about this album) or from all good record shops, as the adverts say.

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