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David Bowie

Lodger

Virgin | 1999 | Album

Biography

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I have to admit for a long time I struggled to understand the hushed tones that people used when they spoke of David Bowie. By the time I discovered pop music Bowie’s career was on a steep downward slide. An increasing rapid decent that would reach it’s nadir with the faux-metal of Tin Machine. He seemed a faded star a total irrelevance in the pop’s synthic new dawn. Bowie appeared to be running on empty, a preening dandy.

It makes me cringe to think I was so naïve and stupid. It was Bowie’s trailblazing that fractured the mould and helped to usher in synth pop rush that I was so enamoured of. He mixed the DNA of pop with the twisted and warped chromosomes of the avant garde. Bowies magpie mind and Eno’s application mixed concepts from fine art, Gnostic manuscripts, experimental music and the occult and produced music of sublime depth, twisted beauty and gravitas.

The wintry instrumentals on Low were my entrance into the world of Bowie’s work. I was haunted by them, intrigued by how they differed from the hit singles I had heard, how there was much more to Bowie than I had ever imagined. Low was the first in the trilogy of Berlin/Brian Eno releases of which Lodger is the last. (Heroes sits in the middle.) Bowie and Eno musical interaction was alchemy, each pushing the other to new creative heights.

Lodger is often dismissed as the weakest of the Berlin LP’s and although it lacks the surprise of both Low and Heroes it is still a groundbreaking and visionary collection. The trio of LP’s form a part of Bowies career that would be impossible for artists to match today.

The time span of the records is breathtaking. In a world where ever last ounce of capital is rung from an LP, the shelf live dragged on by releasing another single. Well you just can’t believe a record company would allow someone the freedom that Bowie enjoyed. More fool them.

The opening side can loosely be termed ‘world music’. The attempt to fuse non European/American sounds with a strain of new wave pop was ground breaking in 1979. Fantastic Voyage has faint echoes of Talking Heads and the vocals sing of shooting missiles and the dread of another World War. Bowie was mining the seam of cold war paranoia that had bleed into Low and Heroes. The shimmering electronics, field recordings and the half rapped half spoken vocal of African Night Flight sign posts the work that Eno would do with David Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. The travelogue imagery is a perfect fit for the rattling backing track. A kind of frantic ambient rock.

The arty approaches that Bowie aided by Eno employed on Lodger are revelled by Move On. The haunting backing is simply All The Young Dudes played backwards. Fantastic Voyage and Boys Keep Swinging are the constructed from the same chord sequence; they are just played at different speeds. Yassassin doesn’t gel, its first person lyric and jarring reggae lilt sound half baked. The world tour continues stopping unsurprisingly in Germany for Bowie to slip a little Neu influence into Red Sails.

For the second side of the LP the mood and music shift into a more focussed pop sound. Pop in a warped fashion that is. The single Boys Keep Swing is another exercise in studio tomfoolery with the band swapping instruments in order to add a loose garage band feel to the track. Repetition portrayal of domestic violence is more powerful due to the restraint of the delivery. Bowies vocals lack any kind of emotion of judgement there is no showboating or histrionics on show. The tight dry bassline sits at the centre of the track. It is a taut and coiled gaining its power through suggestion.

The LP was harshly reviewed at the time. It was seen as a footnote to Heroes a let down after the highs of the last two LPs. Its an undeserved fate, Lodger is the lost classic in Bowies back cat that is waiting for you to embrace it.

Tony Heywood