Love David Bowie! In anticipation of his latest release I wanted to take a look back at the last 20 years of Bowie albums (8 in number, including next week’s ‘The Next Day’). First up, Black Tie White Noise, the first of 2 albums Bowie released in 1993. BTWN marked the beginning of what was something of a creative renaissance in DB’s career as a solo artist.
Coming off of a couple of uninspired mid-80s bombs (‘Tonight’ and ‘Never Let Me Down’) and the Tin Machine experiment (2 albums closing out the 80s, where DB was relegated to just band member, along with noise-guitarist extraordinary, Reeves Gabrels, and a couple of Soupy Sales’ kids), BTWN was a reassertion of DB’s reputation as a relevant artist and bona fide mover of discs - for a number of reasons it didn’t quite work out that way, but there is still a hell a lot on this album that’s worthwhile. This recording begins a string of albums that helped rehabilitate the career of an artist with maybe a little something to prove.
BTWN reunited Bowie with co-producer Nile Rodgers, who worked with DB on the excellent and super commercial ‘Let’s Dance’ - and this work comes across as Let’s Dance’s eccentric older cousin. It’s horn heavy, dance-able & strange and the songs (at least the originals, there are a handful of covers that are successful to varying degrees) beat up just about anything in Bowie’s output the previous decade. DB’s involvement as musician/producer on this record is greater than on any since the end of his ‘classic’ period (ending with 1980’s Scary Monsters). He contributes not only most of the songs (with solo writing credits), but guitar work and some pretty fine sax solos on the majority of tracks.
This record has been seen by some as a love letter to then-new bride Iman, and this idea is certainly backed up by the opening and closing tracks, ‘The Wedding’ and ‘The Wedding Song’ [same song, really, the former an instrumental, the latter with lyrics (in a typically-Bowie self-referencing way, this recalls a similar arrangement between the opening and closing numbers ‘Scary Monsters,’ It’s No Game pt.’s 1 & 2)]. ‘The Wedding’ is a fantastic opener, and right away establishes an important sonic element to the entire album: The Groove.
A minor sin: the sequencing slips a bit with the next couple of tracks, a re-recorded Tin Machine hold over, ‘You’ve Been Around’, a groove-y but otherwise unremarkable cover of Cream’s ‘I Feel Free’ and the LA race riots-inspired title track, but what follows is extraordinary stuff.
The sequence beginning with ‘Jump They Say’ (possibly the greatest forgotten single of DB’s - see above video), and progressing through an excellent cover of Scott Walker’s ‘Nite Flites,’ the pulsing, chanting club dub of ‘Pallas Athena’ through the playful chirp of single ‘Miracle Goodnight’ (I dare you not to hum this song for the rest of the day after hearing it) - I’d put this four song sequence up against any in his catalog and it would hold its own - seriously!
The last third of the album consists of the pretty ‘Don’t Let Me Down and Down’ (honestly, this album may include the highest concentration of straight up love songs - and there’s 2 - in DB’s catalog) and the lounge-dance of ‘Looking For Lester’ featuring a call and response duet between the great trumpet work of Lester Bowie and David’s own saxophone - nothing quite like it in the oeuvre. A schmaltzy cover of Morrissey’s ‘I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday’ follows and the album closes with the aforementioned ‘Wedding Song’ - a gorgeous ballad that puts a heart-shaped exclamation point on what is, though perhaps a tad dated, still a fine, fine album with a few songs that I feel are among his best.
There would be even better material in the not so distant future, but this was a great start to a new decade, which saw more and more artists coming out of the woodwork, acknowledging Bowie’s influence and hailing their hero’s return to inspired music-making.
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