Scary Monsters.
After this, for David Bowie, there was nothing. That's the popular consensus, at least. This 1980 record is given somewhat undue status in the Bowie discography for the simple enough reason that all the fans, left bewildered and betrayed as he spent the ensuing decade in an advanced state of sell-out, were left clutching Scary Monsters as the symbol of genius past, the last true David Bowie album.
That doesn't make the CD first tier, of course. It's a world-weary and cynical affair, a followup and stepdown from his Berlin Trilogy, or if you like, Heroes. To me, it's the other side of Lodger - fixing that record's main flaw, Scary Monsters is a cohesive whole which has a specific road to travel, unlike Lodger, which starts abruptly, takes several violent shifts in direction, scatters itself to the four winds and then just stops. Scary Monsters is technically the better production, even though it's not as much fun to listen to.
David's partnership with Brian Eno had lost its creative spark, so they went their separate ways, Brian to make sound paintings and produce the Talking Heads, David to make music that would be accessible. Gone here are the improvised lyrics and waves of dissonance, and the production only rarely gets out of bounds. At the same time, having survived the seventies, his divorce finalized and all his emotional baggage needing to be unpacked, what took place in the studio was what David later described as "some kind of purge." In direct opposition to the glamorous dystopias and insular characters from earlier albums, Scary Monsters has a sense of the real world and its forceful intrusions upon an artist's inner life.
Of all the captivatingly odd beginnings in the Bowie catalogue, from the heartbeat drum of Five Years to the train sounds to David's starkly intoned "Nothing remains..." on Sunday, Scary Monsters wins the "most astonishing" prize. It's No Game (No. 1) begins with Tony Visconti starting up a tape deck, a quick spin of a noisemaker and then wham! you're accosted by the angry voice of a Japanese lady (Michi Hirota). When David does get in on the act, his voice is as painfully contorted as his body was on the Lodger cover, screaming about revolution, refugees and fascists. Clunky, mangled guitar matches him straight to the end, to his final cries of "shut up!" The song is ugly, plain and simple. It's also totally brilliant, a four minute showcase of David's willingness to go out on a limb.
Up the Hill Backwards is a slab of cacophonous but accessible art-rock. It's pretty obviously a divorce song, but one senses a hangover of civil unrest that infects the whole record. David sings in chorus over all kinds of Bo Diddley beats.
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is expansive and claustrophobic (rather like a speeding car). It's also an ominous work, David's voice distorted by an extreme cockney accent and an attitude of cruel indifference to a mentally ill girl. "She asked me to stay and I stole her room/asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind/now she's stupid, in the street, and she can't socialize," to sarcastically conclude "well I loved the little girl and I'll love her till the day she dies." The repetitive striking of metal and the guitar licks aid the atmosphere, though it does go on a bit long...
Ashes to Ashes is one of the ultimate Bowie classics, with a shimmering melodic hook and his voice at its fragile best in the confessions of long lost astronaut Major Tom. The beauty of the work is reflected in the video, featuring David in an extraordinary, very European clown costume, suffering quietly through all manner of strange things. The music video never got better than that and new wave never got better than this. The haunting backing vocals, the dignity that carries the chorus and ending refrain "my mama said/to get things done/you'd better not mess with Major Tom," is exquisite.
Fashion is a cynical dance-floor track, filled with the obvious beats and handclaps, while simultaneously provoking a flood of sharp-edged, angry guitar. Ah, if he'd taken Fashion as his cue in making Let's Dance....he'd have made a lot less money.
Anyway... Side Two gets started with the criminally underrated epic Teenage Wildlife. David's powerhouse singing as he unveils a tale of desperation and unhappiness, going from guttural to falsetto, dispassionate to anguished, articulate to incoherent.... It's amazing and I'm puzzled at the song's obscurity.
Scream Like a Baby is too tricked out and effects-laden for its own good, starting strong within the rattled brain of a victim of a totalitarian regime. "Well, I wouldn't buy no merchandise/and I wouldn't go to war/.../and I hide under blankets/or did I run away? The machinery rhythms in the music strengthen the vision, but somehow it doesn't coalesce into anything. It feels like filler when it really shouldn't.
A Television cover! Why wasn't this a single? Devoid of the lyric, Kingdom Come is an excellent slice of pop music, remarkably short and enjoyable. The story it tells is probably meant to evoke negro songs from the plantations, but here the context shifts to the territory of prison camps, gulags and the hopeless endurance of a man who sees no future left for him. Grim.
Stuart Townsend guests on Because You're Young. His riff is awesome, but the track suffers from over-production. It's way too busy for its own good, worked over past endurance. A pity, since there's a good song in there someplace. Visions of war-torn young lives, and the unexpectedly unguarded line "the people I know/people I love/they seem so unhappy/dead or alive..." and Townsend on guitar are all lost, drowned by all this stuff. A pity.
It's No Game (No. 2) plays over the same backing tracks and has the same tempo as the original. No Japanese and no violent guitar. It's a weary, more coherent version of events, all the bile having run out over the past nine songs. David sounds like he's glancing at his watch. He sings his last song, puts on coat and hat, leaves the building. And then he just stands drained in the doorway, looking out onto the street. "So where's the moral?"
No, it's not the last great Bowie record. There were a few more in the offing....
Well, so it's another of those dark CDs I like so much. Enjoy.
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