Bowie Revisited: Outside

And then there's Outside.  Unlike Bowie's previous 2 albums, there was some anticipation before Outside's release among more than just the die hard fans.  Sometime in 1994, an announcement was made that Bowie would be reuniting with Brian Eno for a new album - the two had last worked together on Bowie's 1979 recording, 'Lodger.'  Bowie's return to solo recording with 1993's 'Black Tie White Noise', showed a renewed commitment to making interesting music, the same year's 'The Buddha of Suburbia' upped the ante a bit, as it was DB's most personally experimental work in more than a decade.  Working with Eno meant that Bowie was ready to make some downright dangerous music.

Though 1974's 'Diamond Dogs' was originally conceived as a concept album and  there was certainly some underlying conceptual framework to many of Bowie's successive records, 'Outside' was designed, from the writing, recording, packaging, etc. with full-blown capital 'C' concepts in mind.  'Outside's' 2 most consuming preoccupations are Millennial Anxiety, and of all things, art-murder.  Bowie and Eno, along with a mixed cast of musicians and sidemen from Bowie's professional past, including Tin Machine's Reeves Gabrels, Erdal Kizilcay (he and Bowie recorded virtually all of 'The Buddha of Suburbia' by themselves), Mike Garson, who had been playing with Bowie off and on since 'Aladdin Sane,' and Carlos Alomar, who'd played rhythm guitar on just about every album since 1975's 'Young Americans,' came up with characters, recording strategies (Eno's 'Oblique Strategies' cards were in studio, Burroughs' 'cut-up' method was put to use in the lyric writing), and a mind-blowing amount of music (the lengthy 70+ minute album was apparently whittled down form hundreds of hours of material). 

The music on this album is dark, paranoid, and wildly ambitious.  Interspersed between proper songs are 'segues'  with Bowie, voice manipulated to sound like among other things, a young girl/murder victim, a lonely octogenarian, and The Minotaur (?), vaguely outlining a story of brutal murder as performance art.

'Leon Takes Us Outside' phases in with its odd noises and spoken dates, setting the paranoiac mood, then morphs into the stormy title track.  'The Hearts Filthy Lesson' follows - this song was a single release just prior to the album, and was a strange, dark statement of the new direction Bowie was prepared to take his audience.  With its violent chug, dark & dense lyrics and icy piano - it is a fantastic piece of music!  'A Small Plot of Land' finds Bowie channeling hero Scott Walker over a frightening jazz number.  The first 'segue' is next -  DB as scared little girl, recording what may be her last words, before the track explodes into the excellent industrio-clash of 'Hallo Spaceboy.'

 

There are many fine songs on this disc: the robo-funk of 'I Have Not Been to Oxford Town;' the morose 'Wishful Beginnings' (which makes the depressing 'Heroes'-era instrumental 'Sense of Doubt' sound like 'Modern Love'); 'We Prick You' and 'I'm Deranged' (one of his absolute best vocal performances) point the way toward the drum & bass sound DB would explore further with his next project.  'Thru These Architects Eyes' is a great stomping rocker, and the closer, 'Strangers When We Meet,' though stylistically a little incongruous, is a superb song on par with many of his epic ballads of the 'Heroes,' or 'Absolute Beginners' variety.

This album garnered generally favorable reviews, and as stated above, arrived with some anticipation - but it sank like a stone.  This is not surprising, given the challenging, dark subject matter and the difficult listening experience 'Outside' can sometimes be -  'Let's Dance' this ain't. 'Outside' can reward repeated listens, though as with any work of this length, there are bound to be some ups and downs. Despite this unevenness, the sheer number of excellent songs here is equal to those on his previous 2 albums combined.  

This is overall, a thrilling piece of work.