Reviews
 What Happened?
The Lone Sharks
Nine Lives
Steve Winwood
Moneyland
Various Artists
I'm Not There (Original Soundtrack)
Various Artists
Home Before Dark
Neil Diamond
Toby Keith's 35 BIGGEST Hits
Toby Keith
It's A Shame About Ray (Collector's Edition)
The Lemonheads
About a Son
Otis Blue (Collector's Edition)
Otis Redding
Loaded
Wood Brothers
|
David Bowie
I suppose that only one album can qualify as my own personal all-time favorite Bowie album, so if forced to choose, I’d pick Aladdin Sane. Coming immediately after the heady rush of fame and controversy sparked by ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,’ Bowie was basking in the limelight, and he was not about to blow it. Aladdin Sane catches Bowie sucking up all of the glory that was being bestowed on him, and, judging by appearances, he was having a great deal of fun with it. This is a much more relaxed album than ‘Ziggy Stardust’, and it is also features better musicianship and far better production than that album, too. Even his look was refined, as is made evident by the cover shot, which was somewhat shocking back in the day.
The album kickstarts with "Watch That Man," a sublimely dense rocker whose volume nearly drowns out Bowie’s surreal recounting of a party. The title song is one of two pun titles (the other being "Jean Genie," a coy reference to Jean Genet) featured on the recording, both of which are standout tracks. On Aladdin Sane pianist Mike Garson fuels things along with some incredibly creative keyboard work, employing a crisp, deft touch while harmonically challenging the strictures of the composition. "Jean Genie," meanwhile, is much more conventional in its form, utilizing a standard boogie beat that drives on relentlessly and features some of Mick Ronson’s best work. Speaking of rockers, few things from the glam era rock harder and convey an appropriately jaded perspective than "Cracked Actor", an account of a warped sensibility at work on a malignant seduction.
For all of its accounts of loopy characters and lost souls, Aladdin Sanenever seems to take itself too seriously, leaving enough space for the listener to smile and revel in Bowie’s bemused tales of degeneracy. "Drive In Saturday," recounts an inverted future of domestic bliss, while "Lady Grinning Soul" successfully seduces the listener into worshipping the song’s namesake. Add in a playfully nutso version of the Rolling Stones’ "Let’s Spend the Night Together", the paranoid song-noir spiel of "Panic in Detroit" and the dramatic camp of "Time", and you’ve got a masterpiece, perhaps the best album to emerge from the ‘Glam’ era.
Grade: 
 
|
More Music Reviews
More Movie Reviews
More Book Reviews
More Concert Reviews
Powered by Millennium Communications Inc.