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A Visionary Earthling
or a techno-logical assault from the futureJanuary 8, 1997: Mr. Bowie turned 50 and to celebrate, he organized an immense concert at Madison Square Garden in New York where old and new friends like Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Billy Corgan, Robert Smith, and Frank Black participated. He knows the concert will have exceptional media and advertising coverage and uses the occasion to play some classics and especially to present "Earthling".
January 8, 1997: Bowie turns 50 and doesn't show it at all, and if you don't believe it, listen to this sonic bomb. The former White Duke has a healthy face, combines gentlemanly demeanor with a youthful smile, wears a tattered cloak and baggy pants, has spiky red hair and energy to spare. With "Earthling", ladies and gentlemen, Ziggy Stardust has returned to Earth transformed into a mad metropolitan android launched into a hysterical race in search of sound pieces to form wild patchworks.
As in the previous "1.Outside", the former White Duke is incredibly inspired, and some ideas seem to come from that album like the visionary screams of "Telling Lies" and the sighs of "I'm Afraid Of Americans", while other influences are drawn directly from new bands like Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails. All the tracks have a really remarkable sonic impact, and some of them, like "Battle For Britain" (at one point you think the CD is skipping, right? It's actually one of Bowie's many genius ideas) and "Dead Man Walking", beyond the characteristic jungle and industrial drumming, surprise with free jazz digressions from the great pianist Mike Garson. With the first "Little Wonder", the technological assault catapults us onto a train that crashes through buildings to cross the city, while in "Seven Years In Tibet", a slow almost blues-like saxophone is pierced by the lacerating stabs of guitarist Reeves Gabrels' distortions and the background vocals of the excellent bassist Gail Ann Dorsey. Pulses from the future and instrumental aggression accompany us without pause through a journey in a future metropolis, and we cannot help but be fascinated by this work that not only winks at the club culture in vogue at the time and the charts but fills modern sounds with renewed English class, refined piano engagements, and a sure and powerful guitar fury. And the lyrics are no less: they manage to be ironic (as in "Little Wonder"), engaged, delirious, and still apocalyptic. Visions of possible futures through "rips in time" alternate with intimate reflections ("Battle For Britain"), social critique of "I'm Afraid Of Americans", and the quotes from Bertrand Russell and Samuel Beckett of the last exaggerated techno delirium "Law".
All those who expected the planned four follow-ups of "1.Outside" might want to be disappointed by this work, but "Earthling", or rather "Eart hl i ng", for me is like a mad rib and more digestible than the previous masterpiece and confirms to us that the greatest is only this man who with his back turned, dressed in the Union Jack, sings I'm your future, I'm tomorrow, I'm the end
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from "Dead Man Walking""Two young ones dance under the streetlight
Shake their sex and their bones
And the boys we were
An alien nation in therapy
Falls naked and new to the ground
Like an irascible toddler
On a slippery rain roadAnd I'm gone gone gone
Now I'm older than movies
Let me dance away
Now wiser than dreams
Let's fly fly fly
While I'm touching tomorrow
And I know who's there
When the silhouettes fall
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By Lesto BANG
If Outside was deep and complex, Earthling is light and fast.
A bizarre work brimming with elderly pretensions of youthfulness as much as possible.
