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Rating: Final Contaminations
or the "thunder ocean" that nobody expected
This mid-October evening is ideal for writing something about "Lodger". Okay, let's begin. Where were we?
Recap of the previous episode: in 1977 Bowie records "Heroes", the second Berlin album, and in 1978 begins the related "Stage" tour, which we have documented in a double live album. After four months the tour stops, we find ourselves in Montreux and...
Bowie decides to start working on a new album, the last piece of his therapy, the final proof of his reborn creativity and his abilities as an innovative author. I know well that most fans and experts consider "Lodger" a minor and disappointing work, but in my opinion, it doesn't betray expectations, and now I'll try to explain my point of view.
The last time we turned around we saw the artist running and screaming through the streets of Berlin in a completely shattered mental, spiritual, and physical state: he has almost definitively abandoned the comfort of cocaine and has been elevated once again to idol status by his electronic roads. Due to the void and the full he created, he risks a relapse into the old image-mythology-drug dependencies and a possible lack of inspiration. Here lies the whole essence of "Lodger": this album is a new turning point, another escape, in a sense even more extreme than "Heroes". Bowie rediscovers the song form and the classic structure of pop-rock, but what he offers us is not a refined album of songs. The singer, along with Brian Eno (but the strength of the partnership is waning) and new guitarist Adrian Belew, once again disrupts the sense of music and proposes something completely different from everything we could expect from him. Did you believe in a new half-sung, half-instrumental album? Sorry! Were you expecting a simple collection of songs that restores the normal order of things? Sorry again!
The dark Berlin balance dissolves into ten extraordinary, destabilizing songs, with a thousand scents and a thousand contaminations. In "Lodger" you can find everything you couldn't even imagine until now, for example, the desperate yet airy pop of "Fantastic Voyage". And indeed, this CD is a fantastic journey because among the ethnic insertions we find the nocturnal and extremely fast exotic delirium of "African Night Flight" or the Turkish reggae of "Yassassin". And in the engaging "Move On" I seem to hear the chorus of "All The Young Dudes" backward, inviting us once again to undertake the so-called journey, a shift towards the frenzied rhythms of "Red Sails" or the critique of "D.J.", "my natural reaction to disco music", a song ironically anti-Western, anti-commercial, anti-Bowie!
But if you really want to return to relatively more conventional paths, then blast max volume with the pearls "Look Back In Anger" and "Boys Keep Swinging", two of the most original and energetic singles of our artist. The guitars run off the rails and create frenzied paths, the singer's voice reaches heights and depths of electropop apocalypse. While Gary Numan climbs the charts with "Heroes" attitudes and the entire pop new wave awakens, Bowie has already moved elsewhere and destroys every convention and past image, mocks the new youth and what he himself was, which will become more evident in the following "Scary Monsters And Super Creeps"... and when we think we've heard it all, here comes the hypnotic blues of "Repetition".
The album, and the whole "Berlin" experience, closes (but is it really closed?) with "Red Money", a mechanical ballad sister to "Sister Midnight" (Iggy Pop) that in my opinion secretly reprises the stylistic elements of "Low". But if you're looking for musical and thematic circularity, you'll be disappointed because it's precisely here that the "canceled project that falls central" is denounced. "Can you feel it fall? Like a nervous disease, it's been there all this time, and will fall from the sky". We hear it well, but not for long, because it's time to break down the Wall... of sound; Berlin has given everything it could, the music has changed forever. Is rock still rock? Is salvation such when innocence is lost? Who has the responsibility to decide how far a song is a song? The divergence with Brian Eno is now total, here David Bowie suggests a response opposite to the one I avoided in the review of "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)": "Such responsibility it's up to you and me". Saying it, he turns around, changes direction, and with the corner of his eye, we manage to catch a sly smile...
from "Look Back In Anger"
"You know who I am," he said
The speaker was an angel
He coughed and shook his crumpled wings
Closed his eyes and moved his lips
"It's time we should be going"
ps: as I already wrote at the end of "Low" and "Heroes", I propose the in-depth exploration of "Uncut" titled "Trans-Europe Excess", visitable at these pages courtesy of velvet goldmine :
uncut 1
uncut 2
uncut 3
uncut 4
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Fantastic Voyage (02:58)
In the event that this fantastic voyage
Should turn to erosion and we never get old
Remember it's true, dignity is valuable
But our lives are valuable, too.
We're learning to live with somebody's depression
And I don't want to live with somebody's depression
We'll get by, I suppose
It's a very modern world, but nobody's perfect
It's a moving world, but that's no reason
to shoot some of those missiles
Think of us as fatherless scum
It won't be forgotten
'Cause we'll never say anything nice again, will we?
And the wrong words make you listen
In this criminal world
Remember it's true, a loyalty is valuable
But our lives are valuable, too.
We're learning to live with somebody's depression
And I don't want to live with somebody's depression
We'll get by, I suppose
But any sudden movement and I've got to write it down
They wipe out an entire race and I've got to write it down
But I'm still getting educated but I've got to write it down
And it won't be forgotten
'Cause I'll never say anything nice again, how can I?
06 D.J. (04:02)
Bowie music by David Bowie, Brian Eno and Carlos Alomar
I'm home, lost my job, and incurably ill
You think this is easy, realism
I've got a girl out there, I suppose
I think she's dancing
Feel like Dan Dare lies down
I think she's dancing, what do I know?
I am a D.J., I am what I play
Can't turn around no, can't turn around, no, oh, ooh
I am a D.J., I am what I play
Can't turn around no, can't turn around, no, oh no
I am a D.J., I am what I play
I got believers (kiss-kiss)
Believing me, oh
One more, weekend, of lights and evening faces
Fast food, living nostalgia
Humble pie or bitter fruit
I am a D.J., I am what I play
Can't turn around no, can't turn around no, ooh
I am a D.J., I am what I say
Can't turn around no, can't turn around, ooh
I am a D.J., I am what I play
I've got believers (kiss-kiss)
Believing me
I am a D.J., I am what I play
Can't turn around no, can't turn around
I am a D.J., I am what I play
Can't turn around no, can't turn around
I am a D.J., I am what I play
Can turn around no (kiss-kiss)
Time flies when you're having fun
Break his heart, break her heart
He used to be my boss and millions of puppet dancer
I am a D.J., and I've got believers
I've got believers
I've got believers
I've got believers in me
I've got believers
I am a D.J., I am what I play
I am a D.J.
07 Look Back in Anger (03:10)
You know who I am, he said
The speaker was an angel
He coughed and shook his crumpled wings
Closed his eyes and moved his lips
It's time we should be going
(Waiting so long, I've been waiting so, waiting so)
Look back in anger, driven by the night
Till you come
(Waiting so long, I've been waiting so, waiting so)
Look back in anger, see it in my eyes
Till you come
No one seemed to hear him
So he leafed through a magazine
And, yawning, rubbed the sleep away
Very sane he seemed to me
(Waiting so long, I've been waiting so, waiting so)
Look back in anger, driven by the night
Till you come
(Waiting so long, I've been waiting so, waiting so)
Look back in anger, feel it in my voice
Till you come
(Waiting so long, ahhh...)
(Waiting so long, I've been waiting so, waiting so) (Waiting so long, I've been waiting so, waiting so)
(Waiting so long, ahhh...)
08 Boys Keep Swinging (03:19)
1.2.3.4
Heaven loves ya
The clouds part for ya
Nothing stands in your way
When you're a boy
Clothes always fit ya
Life is a pop of the cherry
When you're a boy
When you're a boy
You can wear a uniform
When you're a boy
Other boys check you out
You get a girl
These are your favourite things
When you're a boy
Boys
Boys
Boys keep swinging
Boys always work it out
Uncage the colours
Unfurl the flag
Luck just kissed you hello
When you're a boy
They'll never clone ya
You're always first on the line
When you're a boy
When you're a boy
You can buy a home of your own
When you're a boy
Learn to drive and everything
You'll get your share
When you're a boy
Boys
Boys
Boys keep swinging
Boys always work it out
09 Repetition (03:01)
Johnny is a man
And he's bigger than you
But his overheads are high
And he looks straight through when you ask him how the kids are
He'll get home around seven
'Cause the chevy's real old
And he could have had a cadillac
If the school had taught him right
And he could have married Anne with the blue silk blouse
He could have married Anne with the blue silk blouse
And the food is on the table
But the food is cold
Don't hit her
"Can't you even cook?
What's the good of me working when you can't damn cook?"
Well Johnny is a man
And he's bigger than her
I guess the bruises won't show
If she wears long sleeves
But the space in her eyes shows through
And he could have married Anne with the blue silk blouse
He could have married Anne with the blue silk blouse
Shows through
Shows through
Shows through
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By bogusman
Move On appears almost acoustic with strange choruses and a deep baritone voice for a melody that rises in an emphatic and desperate crescendo in the best Bowie style.
Do you have a conflicted relationship with disco music? There’s nothing better than that indecipherable ambiguity that is D.J.
