Outside.
The heading of this post is the subtitle of this 1995 outing from David Bowie. After his notorious 80s slump, he came out with a fine set of 90s albums before taking up retirement in the early years of the new millennium. Properly titled 1. Outside, first in a proposed trilogy, is the most ambitious of the 90s products and the finest. Considering that Scary Monsters is overrated and Lodger daft, I would be willing to call Outside his best album since "Heroes."
A word of warning: unless you are tremendously fond of William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker or the cyberpunks, do NOT read the booklet or you'll be put right off. Those who like that kind of thing are in for a treat. The concept involves... fear of the millennium (the story is set in 1999), madness, suicide cults, grisly performance art, a "detective professor," the art murder of a 14 year old girl and maybe some aliens. A sample: "Yea. I remember Ramona. She set herself up as the no-future priestess of the Caucasian Suicide Temple, vomiting out her doctrine of death-as-eternal-party into the empty vessels of Berlin youth."
So comes 74 minutes in a musical style that critics sometimes dismiss as a grunge send-up. The band? Brian Eno the sound painter came up with his usual bag of "treatments and strategies," while no less than Mike Garson reappeared with his expressive piano playing - and David Bowie always got the most out of his sidemen. Notable on guitar is Reeves Gabrels, whilst longtime bandmate Carlos Alomar retains the rhythm guitar. There are others I won't go into.
1. Outside is a film in sound - so dim the lights and concentrate.
Cinematic fade-in, as if the music has been going on for several minutes, piano tinkling away as if in some futurist lounge or lobby. It's called Leon Takes Us Outside. Who is Leon? Perhaps the shadowy ghoul who graces the back cover? His is the first voice you hear, muttering key dates. Martin Luther King Day. August. 1999. Midwinter. Etc. Unsettling as it is, it serves purely as a segue from silence.
Outside is where things begin. One minute of this was all anyone needed to know David was back at the top. If this is grunge, it's filtered through layers of art-rock. Again a confusion of dates, "now/not tomorrow/yesterday/not tomorrow." What does it all mean? No idea, but the bleak and melancholy atmosphere, the stately and sweeping music carry you past the enigma. People say Nathan Adler, private eye, was David's latest persona, but I disagree. It's not Adler who narrates these songs. He'll show up much later.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson owes a lot to Nine Inch Nails. Grunge guitar abounds, but the moodsetter is in fact Garson's piano, pounding into your mind one minute one minute, then backing off and becoming frail and silent. It was an unlikely single with a sepia toned, nightmarish video I'd advise you track down. Rather than play the death cult up for all it's worth, this anonymous narrator is divided, relishing the tangible sickness of his world and life, then severing off to cry "oh Patty/I think I've lost my way." Whoever this Patty is does not get into the liner notes. Nor does the narrator, for that matter...
A Small Plot of Land changes tactic. Mike Garson leads the relentless rhythm section as the narrator points to another victim, this one a man with "two innocent eyes," spat upon and resented. The music takes on the electronic voices and stamping of a crowd, the title perhaps referring to the small plot on which the man loses his life....
There are segues placed strategically across this album, all voice acting done by David, of course. They form chapter breaks, in my mind. Segue - Baby Grace (A Horrid Cassette) is the narrative of the 14 year old, perhaps tape recorded as her final, drugged up testament before being murdered. Oh, there's music to these segues for texture, but scarcely as a comforting distraction. Meanwhile this child has the wizened voice of an old woman...
An explosion cuts the cassette off and leads into one of the only full rockers on the record, Hallo Spaceboy. Broken snatches of pre-recorded voices thread in and out of a soundscape with pummeling drums and guitar jumping from one speaker to the other. If it's not about aliens or astronauts, then it must be the most abstract, hallucinogenic event in the "story."
Mike Garson once said The Motel was his twenty-five-years-later version of Lady Grinning Soul, and if you want beauty in a soundscape where little can be found, this is the reprieve. The exhausted, desperate reprieve. The hero seems almost sane, recognizing the limitations and artifice of the world around him.
I Have Not Been to Oxford Town finds him in jail for the murder of Baby Grace. The funky, if angular, rhythms make this one of the most appealing songs included - it's even got handclaps, the old standby of accessibility. This is where Nathan Adler steps in, leading back into the hazy storyline while the one in jail ruminates on his position.
No Control is a direct follow-up: "Stay away from the future/back away from the light/it's all deranged/no control." The music on this record is so dense that it's euphoric to listen to but beyond my ability to describe, so I must focus on the dread, the obsessive blending of past, present and future, the fear of powerlessness and the mystery of who exactly the narrator is addressing.
Segue - Algeria Touchshriek takes time away for the soliloquy of an old man. There's enough in this clip for a good short story, but it's a brief note with no apparent relation to the plot at hand. It does prove that the whole cityscape is crazy: "My shop sells aid shows off the see saws and empty females."
The psychotic chapter comes next. The narrator is back, the pace picks up and carries him forward in a frenzy. How'd he get out of jail? We'll never know. The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (As Beauty) encases his mad, broken ravings, his sudden fear and distaste towards women rising to incoherency, hinting at lab experiments.
Segue - Ramona A. Stone/I Am With Name is segue and song combined as sheer lunacy. With a voice like a cyborg and sporting a bad mid-life crisis, Ramona is like a nightmare, yet there's something vain and theatrical about her as well. The segue overlaps into music made of assorted industrial noises. There is applause. Someone screams out. The narrator becomes unintelligible and the musings of Nathan Adler intervene, turning this into Outside's harshest song.
For Wishful Beginnings, I will say little. It's a testament to David Bowie that he could make so distasteful a character pitiable. It's his singing that allows this excessive postmodern gothic to be believable.
We Prick You shows the narrator split in two by his madness. Schizophrenic phrasing, fantasies of violence, memories of incestuous desires, and yet, pulling against these terrors is an obscured line that repeats through the song until it becomes benevolent. Musically, this fractured psychosis is amazing to hear.
Taking a needed break from the threatening, sex-ridden monster the narrator's become, it's time for Segue - Nathan Adler. His monologue ties Ramona, Touchshriek and Leon together (sort of) while again failing to identify the narrator or that mysterious extra character. David voice-acting a hard-boiled detective somehow comes across as deeply funny, it's so over-the-top and out of place.
I'm Deranged is breathtaking. David's singing on this drawn-out lament for sanity is shiver-inducing. It also functions as a key moment of self-realization for the presumed protagonist.
Things take an abruptly sunny turn with Thru' These Architects Eyes. "All the majesty of a city landscape/all the soaring days in our lives/all the concrete dreams in my mind's eye..." The tune speaks of a degree of peace, despite the bitter railing against his actual job. It's an about-face so startling that it's difficult to make sense of. It's the most Musically, it's the most upbeat the album's been since Oxford Town, but there's still that manic edge; perhaps his madness is not shed, it's simply taken another form....
It's time for Segue - Nathan Adler again. 27 seconds to drum up the real connection between Ramona and Leon, not that it's all that shocking. Not worth the addition? Then why is it there?
As if 70 minutes were not enough, David decided to re-work the song Strangers When We Meet from his Buddha of Suburbia album. Having no part in this violent "hyper-cycle" it's out of place, as if a window has been thrown open. Though a sad song, it seems warm, healthfully wistful and full of life coming on the heels of Outside. It could be interpreted as a philosophical nudge, David's way of saying "this was a simple theater presentation and I am just a songwriter."
However, the greatest aspect of a concept like Outside is the width of interpretation. I took the first person, linear approach but you could take the "non-linear" sub-title to heart: for example, it could end with Oxford Town. Or you could take to the notion that the songs are told through multiple viewpoints. You could even do it over in Jungian style, if you were so inclined.
If you've a mind to skip the concept and enjoy the music, that's also an option. It's how I did it the first time. Any way you parse it, it makes for great music and a good story, if fully aware of its own derangement. Maybe that's why there wasn't a 2. Maybe remaining in a world like that for so long would be too much of an effort.
It left one incredible CD, anyway. And it gave me a devil of a time trying to find the words for reviewing it.* This is not music for all tastes and your mileage may vary. If this review sounded unpleasant, I'd advise you skip this CD and check out a different 90s effort, such as Hours or Black Tie White Noise, which are much more pleasant.
Stay tuned for next week's October inspired nightmare.
*Hence much Tuesday editing...
No comments:
Post a Comment