Reviews
 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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David Bowie
When I was kid, about 8 or 9 years old, the song “They’re Coming To Take Me Away” by Napoleon XIV would induce some type of sickness in me. Every time it came on the radio, it would upset me to the point where I’d get physically ill. It was so bad that I would sometimes vomit when I heard it (this happened on three separate occasions, much to my own embarrassment and consternation). I presume that it had something to do with the way that the pitch rolled around, making me feel seasick, while the subject matter scared me to death. Well, thank God this album wasn’t around back then, or I might have done a lot worse than just lose my lunch. Outside concerns itself with the saga of Baby Grace, a female child raised in captivity for the sole purpose of sensual deprivation, torture and eventually, her ritual murder, dissection, and dismemberment, and subsequent display of her body parts as a work of art; “(Her) intestines (were) removed, disentangled and reknitted as it were, into a small net or web and hung between the pillars of the murder-location”. Do you want to vomit yet?
Talk about tough love. With subject matter like this, Outside qualifies as ‘tough like’. The tone of the album could hardly be more dark and grisly, and it is therefore difficult to say that the album is ‘enjoyable’ on any level, and yet Bowie somehow manages to pull it together. Outside is more of a storyboard album than a ‘rock opera’ (an absurd term for almost anything, but it’s especially ludicrous here). Bowie illustrates the story by portraying the various characters through dialogue and through a musical mosaic that is almost as disturbing as the gruesome storyline. At times, the music borders on cacophonous insanity, atonal and relentlessly driving (as any depiction of art-based ritual murder should be, I suppose). Melodies are minimal, often working against the chord structure as a means of depicting mental imbalance.
Musically, Outside is excellent, with tight, ominous arrangements that could seep the oxygen right out of the room. In particular, the off-kilter piano work of Mike Garson is exceptional throughout. If nothing else, this album proves that Bowie’s creative imagination is still intact, albeit commercially challenged. In that sense, Outside is the polar opposite of Never Let Me Down (released only two years previously), an album that bent over backwards to please everybody but failed artistically. Artistically, Outside is a triumph. Commercially, it is doomed. There are no hit singles here, believe me, but there is plenty for you to mull over; just don’t do it on a full stomach.
Grade: 
 
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