David Bowie: 1. Outside - 1995

"We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks" - Brian Eno

  

David Bowie was back with his old mate, producer Brian Eno, for this one. It was released two years after the vaguely experimental Black Tie White Noise and it ploughed several new furrows - dance music, spoken interludes, electronica, post grunge and even more avant garde, piano-driven jazz than had been dabbled with on the previous album. 

It has, supposedly, a "concept" about a detective investigating the horrific murder and dismembering of a fourteen year-old girl. All rather unsettling and frankly a bit odd. It features several characters and, in between the songs, has several short, often spoken pieces. The one called Baby Grace I actually don't ever play, finding it decidedly creepy. 

So, I just stick to the songs, leaving out the spoken interludes and, playing them thus, the "concept" fades away. Did I really care about these characters anyway? No. The songs can all be taken separately, at face value. Yes, I know it is supposed to be listened to in its original incarnation, but well, there you go, I don't. Am I "cheating" the concept? Bowie purists would undoubtedly say yes. Does that worry me? Of course not. Without my strategic editing the concept hangs like a grey cloud over any potential listening pleasure - it had to be done.

 

Bowie himself said that the album was intended to be post-apocalyptic in a slightly Diamond Dogs fashion as the end of the century approached, something about which Bowie seemed to have become increasingly afraid of. 

Anyway, on to the "proper" tracks.

 

Outside is a solemn, intense but sonically addictive song, with a really strong Bowie vocal and a great sound to it. It features lots of searing guitar, keyboards and a slow, industrial drum beat. I had actually forgotten what a fine, atmospheric opener it was. It is easily one of the album's best songs.

The excellent, dense but still catchy Heart's Filthy Lesson introduces us to Bowie's dance beat experimentation that would continue into 1997's Earthling album. Beneath the thumping beat lies some madcap Mike Garson piano, delicious rhythms, backing vocals and some archetypally haughty Bowie vocals coming in here and there. It is an innovatory and interesting track, up there with Outside at the top of the album's list of quality numbers. The title line is really infectious too.

 

Similarly so is the avant-garde jazz of A Small Plot Of Land, with the old Ziggy-era pianist Garson again to the fore. It is a most unusual track with some beguiling rhythms, cutting Talking Heads-style guitar and oddly distant but sonorous vocals floating around from Bowie. It is one of his strangest songs. 

Quite how Hallo Spaceboy - a crazed dance beat song with spacey overtones - fits in with the album's concept is unclear. Well, basically, it doesn't. It seems completely incongruous to me. It did, however, make for a catchy, dancey single that got a fair amount of radio play at the time. Overall, though, it sticks out like a sore thumb within the album as a whole, rendering the whole concept thing somewhat superfluous.

The Motel is a haunting, ethereal number with some more sumptuous Mike Garson piano, some absolutely killer Reeves Gabrels guitar and some echoes of the future in how some of the Blackstar album would sound in places. It's that whole futuristic jazz thing. It is darkly beautiful and has pre-hints of Blackstar and Lazarus from the Blackstar album. When Bowie sings "there is no hell" he sounds just as he does when he sings "look at me, I'm in Heaven" some twenty years later.

 

The impressive I Have Not Been To Oxford Town has Bowie narrating part of the album's concept in full actor mode, semi-singing over an insistent but highly captivating guitar-driven industrial rhythm. It is similar to the feel of Something off Lodger. What, though? Ah, Red Money, that's it. I love the deep, throbbing bass line and fuzzy guitar interjections that are present throught this sombre but catchy track and its portentous, futuristic lyrical vibe. Bowie is in total vocal control here too. Most impressive. Musically, it is also vaguely funky near the end - check out those guitar bits. The lyric "20th century dies" reminds me of "till the 21st century lose" from Time Will Crawl on 1987's Never Let Me Down album.

No Control has a slow-burning, walking pace techno-influenced dance-ish beat and a typically arch Bowie vocal, chock full of expressive atmosphere. He is trying to show those Pet Shop Boys a thing or two. He can still change with the times. This is a perfect example of mid-nineties Bowie. As a dyed-in-the-wool seventies Bowie man I obviously prefer that period in comparison with the others, but I fully accept and ultimately embrace the man's constant willingness to change. It is what made him such a vibrant, vital artist, isn't it? I love the final bit of this track - "you've got to have a sceme, you've got to have a plan" - and its accompanying gently rhythmic backing.

 

The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction has more of that Aladdin Sane-style piano over another thumping dance beat. Dance rhythms are getting increasingly common as the album progresses, a definite signpost for the next album. The song is a good one, though - powerful but captivating simultaneously. This is dance music with a difference - not just stick your arms in the air - Bowie always wants you to think. His lyrics are always cerebrally provocative. Even the title alone gets you wondering what the hell is it all about. It pricks one's intrigue and the more I listen to these tracks the more addictive they become. This album is all I'm playing right now.

 

I Am With Name is a bizarre, cacophonous piece of jazzy experimentation that doesn't lend itself to too many listens, to be honest. It is part of a segue that I often skip over or leave out, to be honest.

Wishful Beginnings has a sledgehammer single beat drum sound that goes right to one's centre. I love the deep, atmospheric sound. It is a slightly unnerving but infectious song. All very enigmatic, particularly in its echoey, haunting beginning and its stark, minimalist denouément. Bowie's voice is typically sonorous and ghostly too - you know, if you could paint this song's atmosphere, or film it, it would be monochrome and smoky. It is a bit of a hidden-away deep cut, hidden behind all that mysterious murk and fog.

 

We Prick You has the frantic, synthesised dance beat back again, but it features some excellent keyboard and guitar sounds too and an energising vocal. It once again serves as a precursor to the Earthling material. I love that catchy little backing noise (you will know which bit I mean when you hear it). the chorus is robust and confrontational, uging its listener to "tell the truth" and there are strange, squeaky backing vocals demanding that "you show respect, even if you diagree". Once more it is a very intriguing and interesting song that grows on you, listen by listen. It has excellent sound again, I have to say.

 

I'm Deranged just washes over you in a swathe of subtle, seductive dance beats and occasionally tinkling piano with a somewhat airy, distant vocal. I say washes of you, but yet again, it is one that begins to work its inexorable way into your system. I love the vocal, actually - Bowie at his most ethereally haughty.

 

Thru' These Architect's Eyes is one of the album's best tracks, however. It has a rumbling bass line, great guitar riffs, yet more wonderful piano and Bowie powerfully incanting out the unsurpringly (by now) perplexing lyrics. 

Finally, (and this has been Bowie's longest ever album), we get the most conventionally-played number, Strangers When We Meet. It has an introductory riff vaguely reminiscent of Spencer Davis's Gimme Some Lovin' and is probably my favourite on the album. It has a great hook, catchy melody and thankfully, no dance rhythms! A "proper" Bowie song - at last. Like Hallo Spaceboy, though, it is a huge incongruity.

These last two songs have been good ones, but, I have to admit, although the album is somewhat stodgy, it does indeed merit many listens. There is much beneath the surface. That, after all, is surely the mark of a good David Bowie album, isn't it? 

 

Incidentally, the extended double disc edition of the album contains endless remixes of some of the tracks - five versions of Hearts Filthy Lesson, for example. It is a labour of love trawling through them all, but some of them are pretty good and sometimes superior to the one used on the actual album. I particularly like the bassy Rubber Mix of Heart's Filthy Lesson.

Interestingly, Brian Eno spoke thus about the album one week after Bowie's death -

"....About a year ago we started talking about Outside – the last album we worked on together. We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks. We talked about revisiting it, taking it somewhere new. I was looking forward to that...."

What a shame it never came to pass.