Ian Dury’s album last time had two exclamation marks that had to be in the title. Bowie has his title in quotation marks, for some reason. Maybe they’re ironic scare quotes?
This is the fourth album this year in Dave ‘n ‘ Iggy’s European Drug-Kicking Adventure, and it’s probably the best one. I say probably, because for me there’s always a recency bias towards the last album I heard, especially since doing this list. No, that’s not true. Some of the Sixties albums that I liked still stay with me, so, no, I’ll restate that: best one of the four. Probably because it also features the combo of Tony Visconti on production, Robert Fripp on guitar, and Brian Eno on the usual Brian Eno craziness (here credited with “guitar treatments” among others).
It follows on from Low musically, with the same kind of mix of Bowie/Eno slightly off-kilter pop-rockers, combined with ambient and instrumental tracks that draw inspiration from krautrockers like Faust, Neu!, Tangerine Dream etc.
Arguably it’s the presence of Fripp’s guitar that elevates this one above Low, especially on the title track and on the opening track Beauty And The Beast. But also the instrumentals are more interesting, albeit with some of the disturbing soundscapes of, say, Can’s Aughm. Moss Garden sees Bowie playing the Japanese koto over dark ambient moans, and Neuköln is even more disturbing, meant to evoke the sense of disconnect in Berlin’s community of Turkish migrants. There’s a sense of prefiguring some of the tracks on Ashes To Ashes as well – tracks like Joe The Lion are closer to that album in sound than they are to Low, but there’s also some nostalgia – Sons Of The Silent Age has a dose of Ziggy-era Bowie to it, for example. Bowie’s voice ascends to the kind of primal scream that he did in Five Years, and will do again on e.g. It’s No Game, and it really gives a sense of passion and power to a track like Heroes.
The “Berlin Trilogy” isn’t over yet, but taken as a musical journey from Station To Station, through Low, to here, coupled with understanding the background behind them, you really get the feeling of a new musical butterfly emerging from the cocoon of drug abuse, and it’s exciting stuff.
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