David Bowie—Scary Monsters

David Bowie—Scary Monsters (1980)

Scary Monsters—Among David Bowie's most celebrated albums—Ziggy Stardust (1972), Low (1977), et al.—Scary Monsters is the most commonly forgotten. It's considered to be roughly on the same plane as the others, but possibly due to its more extreme nature, it's often left off such lists. Unlike the more moderate persona of its predecessor Lodger (1979), Scary Monsters is painted with Bowie as a sinister Pierrot; likewise, the songs and Bowie's vocals are confrontational and disquieting compared to Lodger's impartial croon, sometimes drone.

Although it follows mostly logically from his previous three albums, and foreshadows the electronic direction of his later albums, Scary Monsters is something of an anomaly. Bowie is unusually direct throughout much of the album, with some pointed criticisms of his peers surfacing here and there, and it's one of his most overwhelmingly guitar-oriented albums. In the hair-raising opener, "It's No Game (No. 1)," Bowie's verses are preceded by singer Michi Hirota's (of Stomu Yamashta's Red Buddha Theatre) Japanese variations. Bowie explained, "I wanted to break down a particular type of sexist attitude about women. I thought the [idea of] the 'Japanese girl' typifies it, where everyone pictures them as a geisha girl, very sweet, demure and non-thinking, when in fact that's the absolute opposite of what women are like. They think an awful lot, with quite as much strength as any man. I wanted to caricature that attitude by having a very forceful Japanese voice on it. So I had [Hirota] come out with a very samurai kind of thing" (Strange Fascination—David Bowie: The Definitive Story, David Buckley, 1999). At the time, Bowie also had recently appeared in a Japanese commercial for Crystal Jun Rock sake for which he recorded the instrumental "Crystal Japan." That later became the B-side to "Up the Hill Backwards," his acoustic-electric tribute to Marcel Duchamp—"Sneakers fall apart"—who sculpted Not a Shoe and was once quoted as saying, "If it is shoes that you want, I'll give you shoes that you will admire to such an extent that you will lame yourselves trying to walk in them" (Surrealism, Julien Levy, 1995).

"Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" is predictably the most overtly insane cut, with Bowie's chorus descending further into voltaic madness as the song wears on. "Space Oddity" sequel "Ashes to Ashes" is a candidate for Bowie's best song ever, an extraordinary self-referential journey that sounds like nothing else before or since—a swirling revelation of multi-tracked vocals, otherworldly synthesizer, and a jaw-dropping, deceptively simple refrain to close it out. "Fashion" is an apocalyptic funk ride that recalls Young Americans (1975) and Station to Station (1976). Centerpiece "Teenage Wildlife" attacks "new wave boys"; seeing as Bowie drew heavy inspiration from Krautrock for his late '70s work, he probably saw new wave artists like Gary Numan as less imaginative and driving than they should have been. "Scream Like a Baby," a holdover from aborted project People from Bad Homes (itself a line that was reused for "Fashion") that was originally called "I Am a Laser" and featured entirely different lyrics, is a carnivalesque song about unfairly-persecuted Sam of vague origins. "Kingdom Come," from Tom Verlaine's solo career, is well-produced but ultimately inferior to the original. "Because You're Young," with guest guitarist Pete Townshend, is a less prominent but satisfying offering coated with Halloween-evoking synthesizer. Flip-side reprise "It's No Game (No. 2)" ramps down the album steeply with a resigned tone, with Bowie inserting a couple new jarring lines into the mix ("Children 'round the world/Put camel shit on the walls").

Scary Monsters is pretty much universally considered the end of Bowie's classic period. In retrospect, he still had good, even great albums ahead of him, such as his final three (Reality [2003], The Next Day [2013], and Blackstar [2016]), but Bowie never assembled quite as good of a band as he did on Scary Monsters. It's an album that's hard to pull into its discrete parts in discussions, and at times it almost feels like a Greatest Hits album because of its career-to-date-encompassing subject matter. Taken on its own, however, it's one of Bowie's most original, galvanizing, and uniformly excellent albums, and it can go toe-to-toe with anything in his canon.

More David Bowie reviews by The Old Noise:

David Bowie (1967)
David Bowie (1969)
The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
Hunky Dory (1971)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Aladdin Sane (1973)
Pin Ups (1973)
Diamond Dogs (1974)
Young Americans (1975)
Station to Station (1976)
Low (1977)
"Heroes" (1977)
Lodger (1979)
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
Let's Dance (1983)
Tonight (1984)
Never Let Me Down (1987)
Black Tie White Noise (1993)
The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)
Outside (1995)
Earthling (1997)
'Hours...' (1999)
Heathen (2002)
Reality (2003)
The Next Day (2013)
Blackstar (2016)

Rockpile—Live at Montreux 1980

Rockpile—Live at Montreux 1980

Live at Montreux 1980—Rockpile was a band that was legendarily heralded for its live performances. It's difficult to find a review on Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, or Rockpile itself without the author mentioning something like that "I Knew the Bride" was butchered on record, but there was rarely any commercial recourse for the average fan to know the difference. Rockpile almost didn't have an album of its own, period—due to contract trifles, Rockpile (Lowe, Edmunds, Billy Bremner, Terry Williams) were forbidden from recording as they were. Instead, the band put out material on the individual albums of Lowe, the principal songwriter, and Edmunds, who favored rock and roll covers. However, this meant the two could not sing on each other's albums, and Bremner, the band's tertiary singer, rarely sung at all. This changed with Seconds of Pleasure (1980), which was a fine effort, but some complained that it ineffectively bottled the Rockpile sound.

As late as the 2000s, there were still few attainable Rockpile discs; the CD reissue of Seconds added the whole of the Nick Lowe & Dave Edmunds Sing the Everly Brothers EP and three live cuts, and at least five notable bootlegs appeared from 1979–1991. There also existed an Elvis cover performed with Robert Plant, oddly (see Concerts for the People of Kampuchea [1981]). Finally, in 2011, Eagle Records mercifully released Live at Montreux 1980—a full concert.

This particular show features a plurality of eight Edmunds selections (insofar that he sings them): Hank DeVito's "Sweet Little Lisa" and "Queen of Hearts" (later popularized by Juice Newton), friend Elvis Costello's "Girls Talk," Don Covay's "Three Time Loser," Graham Parker's "Crawlin' from the Wreckage," Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock," Dave Bartholomew's "I Hear You Knocking," and Otis Blackwell's "Let's Talk about Us," most of which take off in the live setting and are benefited by Bremner's friendly snarl. Bremner himself sings his own "Trouble Boys" and the Louisiana jaunt "You Ain't Nothing but Fine" (Semien/Soileau), and Lowe sings the remainder: his own "So It Goes," "I Knew the Bride," and "They Called It Rock," Pickett/Phillips' "Teacher Teacher," and Mickey Jupp's "Switchboard Susan." All three sing a great rendition of Jim Ford's "Ju Ju Man."

Unfortunately for Lowe fans, his moments are largely lackluster, though this is often because of poor sound recording; Lowe seems not to have been mic'd up correctly at times, mostly at the beginning of "So It Goes" and parts of "Teacher Teacher." The former also doesn't benefit from Edmunds' refrain, which highlights the somewhat perplexing nature of Lowe's difficult-to-replicate studio tricks. The saving grace is that "Switchboard Susan" is presented in probably its best incarnation anywhere—where Jupp's original and Lowe's Labour of Lust (1979) recording lacked a certain facility, it soars here. In truth, however, it's probably fortunate that the band left out lighter numbers like "(I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass," "Heart," "When I Write the Book," and "Cruel to Be Kind," which didn't always flourish on stage.

Predictably, Live at Montreux 1980 feels slightly excessive, especially during long sections of Edmunds' vestigial rock-around-the-clock fantasies, but taken for what it is, it's a mostly great show. The set might have been better with "Born Fighter," "Heart of the City," or "Love So Fine" in the places of others, but as it is, it's a package that was worth the wait.

XTC—Black Sea

XTC—Black Sea

Black Sea—Recorded under the exact circumstances as their previous album, Drums and Wires (1979), it would be a mistake to say XTC's Black Sea was simply more of the same. It is unmistakably similar in all its superficial details—same band, producer (Steve Lillywhite), studio (Virgin's The Town House), respective recording date, and length (within two minutes)—but more importantly, it also shares its intelligence and musicality. Andy Partridge's brash, satisfying rocker "Respectable Street," which caused a minor controversy over banal concerns (passing mentions of abortion and contraception), criticizes haughty suburbanites. The inspiration came from a nagging, noise-sensitive neighbor of his near Bowood Road in Swindon, where "several of the houses had this very English thing: a caravan—a trailer—in the front garden. And I thought, 'I've never seen those move! They must be like status symbols, telling people 'We could go away, if we choose to'" (Andy discusses "Respectable Street," Todd Bernhardt, February 26, 2007). He explained that much of his material was written in this house during a break from touring the previous album, and despite the suggestion that Black Sea was hurried, the results were better than when Go 2 (1978) was churned out in the wake of White Music (1978).

Colin Moulding's "Generals and Majors," the lead single, is an amusing take on Oh, What a Lovely War! epitomizing thusly: "Generals and majors always/Seem so unhappy unless they've got a war." "Living through Another Cuba," one of Partridge's earliest rants, is a grower, at first sounding repetitive, but features great guitar work; he details the paranoia of living in the U.K. between Reagan's United States and Brezhnev's Soviet Union ("We're the bulldog on the fence/While others play their tennis overhead"). The bouncy "Love at First Sight," which Moulding introduces on BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert as being "about debauchery and things like that," pokes fun at promiscuous young people, complete with choruses of "duh." "Rocket from a Bottle" is Partridge's token earnest boyish-infatuation tune, and the swaying "No Language in Our Lungs" laments failures in communication (best line: "I would have made this instrumental/But the words got in the way").

The lumbering "Towers of London" ("about some masonry"), making use of found percussion, sentimentalizes London. "Paper and Iron (Notes and Coins)" attempts to balance the Christian ideal of simple living with the modern necessity of security in wealth. "Burning with Optimism's Flames" ("our rewrite of 'Joy to the World'") is a fun, jumping album cut, if nonsensical. "Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me)," based around the comic book character (the first of three XTC DC Comics-inspired songs, followed by "That's Really Super, Supergirl" and "Brainiac's Daughter"), is a slightly amusing if ultimately contrived set of lyrics. The excellent, halfway-ironic heavy metal closer, "Travels in Nihilon," named after the book, interprets the title more literally.

Black Sea sometimes feels like the most perfunctory of XTC's early albums. It also features some of their least involved arrangements, but on the other hand, that makes it all the more bombastic. It's more confident than Drums and Wires, a bit smarter, and generally catchier, which are all things that should come from a band as they evolve.

More XTC reviews by The Old Noise:

White Music (1978)

Go 2 (1978)

Drums and Wires (1979)

Black Sea (1980)
English Settlement (1982)
Mummer (1983)
The Big Express (1984)
25 O'Clock (1985)
Skylarking (1986)
Psonic Psunspot (1987)
Oranges & Lemons (1989)Nonsuch (1992)Apple Venus Volume 1 (1999)
Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) (2000)

Squeeze—Argybargy

Squeeze—Argybargy

Argybargy—It's a tall task for a singles band to put together a respectable album. It has proven difficult since the inception of the album format, and some artists, no matter how talented, aren't best represented by it; they may be more focused on individual compositions, in which case not every one will be a gem, but they still need to fill an LP. This is definitely true in the case of Squeeze, whose first two albums, Squeeze (1978) and Cool for Cats (1979), were decidedly uneven. One would expect the approach might be different with their third album, Argybargy, but there really wasn't—the songs were just better, bullet for bullet.

Like Cool for Cats, Chris Difford's lyrics recount seemingly prosaic stories and events, even touching on observational humor. "Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)" is the successor to Cats' titular closing piece, picking up right where Squeeze left off. Where that album roiled with camp, plodding on every other cut with a sense of limited novelty, Glenn Tilbrook's Argybargy melodies are prettier, finding better uses for keyboardist Jools Holland's whimsical playing. "Another Nail in My Heart" is the greatest pop single of its time, immaculately crafted with its cleverly-misplaced bridge: the greatest snapshot of the band's talents. "Separate Beds" is a more innocent boy-girl song than is typical for Difford, and so it is knowingly understated, but still sweet. What really sets Argybargy apart from its predecessors—which despite their faults, had singles as good as anything Squeeze ever did—is songs like "Misadventure," which combines the colorful imagery of "Take Me I'm Yours" with the playfulness of the otherwise-valueless "Touching Me Touching You." Similarly, "I Think I'm Go Go" is an upgrade on "The Knack," utilizing more of the band's strengths where before they were flat and uncharacteristically minimal.

"Farfisa Beat" is the only real throwaway, a dismally catchy piece of nonsense that was somewhat insultingly released as a single in select European countries. Welcome for its dynamic interplay is "Here Comes That Feeling," Difford's esoteric, intrusive thinking that underpins many of his stories, much like contemporary Elvis Costello. "Vicky Verky" is a transparent follow-up to "Up the Junction," bordering on self-plagiarism but ultimately pleasing with its uptempo keyboard rush. "If I Didn't Love You" was Squeeze's minor breakthrough on U.S. radio, more straightforward and seductive than the playful pub poppers that made them popular in their home country of England. Third vocalist Jools Holland takes on the effervescent "Wrong Side of the Moon," which is a solid tune despite its ostensibly careless nature; "There at the Top" somehow comes off as more questionable by comparison, bordering on derisive.

It should be said that Argybargy feels slightly underweight, and this is no coincidence. Squeeze originally recorded 14 songs for the album that A&M trimmed to 11; "Someone Else's Heart" would be reused for East Side Story the following year, "Funny How It Goes" was effectively the title song under the album's original name (It's a Funny Old World), and "What the Butler Saw" was instead used as the b-side to the single of "Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)." This is unfortunate, as the three bolster the set—fortunately, modern releases of the album include them and they are otherwise easy to find. Even without them, however, Argybargy is an impressive pop record with superlative material, and for Squeeze it became their first LP that was truly worth owning.