ewe2
25-01-2007, 07:00 PM
We're learning to live with somebody's depression
And I don't want to live with somebody's depression
We'll get by, I suppose
It's a very modern world, but nobody's perfect
It's a moving world, but that's no reason
Shoot some of those missiles
Think of us as fatherless scum
It won't be forgotten
'Cause we'll never say anything nice again, will we?
-- Fantastic Voyage, Lodger
Probably the least known of the so-called "Berlin Trilogy" (Low, Heroes, Lodger) although only one of them was actually made in Berlin, Lodger is said to be the accessible one: no weird instrumentals, no Fripp messing up the songs etc. After that, wikipedia and other sources have little to say, certainly nothing about the actual content of the album bar pocket song descriptions. There's also a curious blindness to the influence of Eno and his Oblique Strategies, surely no greater than on this album. After all, it's Eno's exploration too. The album is thematically like a travel catalogue evoking Africa, Turkey, China as alienating devices and Adrian Belew's guitar work is suitably alienating.
Look at those lyrics from Fantastic Voyage again. I wish they weren't so topical. The music is strongly reminiscent of a typically dotty early Eno song, this time not so much droll as gentle sad cynicism. In other words, its a nice way of saying we suck. African Night Flight is only African by association: its real concern is with busy nothings who zip by on the way somewhere else, full of themselves and their career path, an admirable subject for Bowie's cut-up lyrical technique, and leading into Move On, a classic Bowie/Eno work, exhibiting Eno's technique (a backwards song recast) and Bowie's recurrent themes of obsession and restlessness:
Feeling like a shadow
Drifting like a leaf
I stumble like a blind man
Cannot forget you
Cannot forget you
The ambiguity of a placeless person yearning either for a person or a place is contrasted by Yassassin from the concrete viewpoint of a simple Turk who isn't obsessed at all; I suspect he prefers his kif and listens to dub. Red Sails sounds like a rock version of Mao's little red book until you hear the lyrics of dislocation and fear, which leads nicely into D.J. which explains the music industry's meglomania:
Time flies when you're having fun
Break his heart, break her heart
He used to be my boss and millions of puppet dancer
I am a D.J., and I've got believers
but I think that's just a cover for David Jones to be insane in plain sight; a wonderful song. Look Back In Anger is a frenetic workout beneath the story of an ignored avenging angel; I always think of Alan Rickman's angel in Dogma, a grubby bored alcoholic angel. Boys Keep Swinging has been controversial on several levels due to the video clip but to me it's always been about the big boys club which can include homoeroticism (uniforms! flags! other boys check you out!) but is more likely entrenched chauvinism (you'll get your share, when you're a boy).
Repetition is deliberately jarring, a deadpan song about domestic violence. When Bowie sings about a Johnny, they're usually unlikeable, and this one takes out his disappointment on his wife. Red Money is right back in dotty Eno territory with a good dash of Alomar funk and is perfect Belew territory. We are looking at the unreal world of Fantastic Voyage and African Night Flight from the outside now, sniggering at the disasters obsessing the corporate mind, oblivious to greater disasters:
Like a nervous disease
And it's been there all along
It will tumble from the sky
It's been there all along
Project cancelled
Tumbling central
Red Money
Can you hear it fall
Can you hear it well
Can you hear it at all
...
Such responsibility
It's up to you and me
From the tone, Bowie doesn't expect anything to come of such a call to responsibility.
Like other albums I've reviewed here, this is another transitional album, the last of the great Bowie collaborations. No more Eno, and more significantly no more Alomar, and less experimentation lay in the future. There is a thread running between Lodger and Scary Monsters, the latter continuing Lodger's themes but much darker bothy lyrically and sonically, with Fripp and Levin replacing Belew and Murray (compare Ashes To Ashes with D.J. for instance). Scary Monsters ties up the hanging threads of Lodger, more directly attacking conformity in Fashion where Boys Keep Swinging only referred to uniforms. But more coherent than Low, less bleak and obscure than Heroes, Lodger deserves to be treated as a freestanding work in its own right, not tied to the previous albums and not an afterthought of a collaborative process whatever its commercial value.
And I don't want to live with somebody's depression
We'll get by, I suppose
It's a very modern world, but nobody's perfect
It's a moving world, but that's no reason
Shoot some of those missiles
Think of us as fatherless scum
It won't be forgotten
'Cause we'll never say anything nice again, will we?
-- Fantastic Voyage, Lodger
Probably the least known of the so-called "Berlin Trilogy" (Low, Heroes, Lodger) although only one of them was actually made in Berlin, Lodger is said to be the accessible one: no weird instrumentals, no Fripp messing up the songs etc. After that, wikipedia and other sources have little to say, certainly nothing about the actual content of the album bar pocket song descriptions. There's also a curious blindness to the influence of Eno and his Oblique Strategies, surely no greater than on this album. After all, it's Eno's exploration too. The album is thematically like a travel catalogue evoking Africa, Turkey, China as alienating devices and Adrian Belew's guitar work is suitably alienating.
Look at those lyrics from Fantastic Voyage again. I wish they weren't so topical. The music is strongly reminiscent of a typically dotty early Eno song, this time not so much droll as gentle sad cynicism. In other words, its a nice way of saying we suck. African Night Flight is only African by association: its real concern is with busy nothings who zip by on the way somewhere else, full of themselves and their career path, an admirable subject for Bowie's cut-up lyrical technique, and leading into Move On, a classic Bowie/Eno work, exhibiting Eno's technique (a backwards song recast) and Bowie's recurrent themes of obsession and restlessness:
Feeling like a shadow
Drifting like a leaf
I stumble like a blind man
Cannot forget you
Cannot forget you
The ambiguity of a placeless person yearning either for a person or a place is contrasted by Yassassin from the concrete viewpoint of a simple Turk who isn't obsessed at all; I suspect he prefers his kif and listens to dub. Red Sails sounds like a rock version of Mao's little red book until you hear the lyrics of dislocation and fear, which leads nicely into D.J. which explains the music industry's meglomania:
Time flies when you're having fun
Break his heart, break her heart
He used to be my boss and millions of puppet dancer
I am a D.J., and I've got believers
but I think that's just a cover for David Jones to be insane in plain sight; a wonderful song. Look Back In Anger is a frenetic workout beneath the story of an ignored avenging angel; I always think of Alan Rickman's angel in Dogma, a grubby bored alcoholic angel. Boys Keep Swinging has been controversial on several levels due to the video clip but to me it's always been about the big boys club which can include homoeroticism (uniforms! flags! other boys check you out!) but is more likely entrenched chauvinism (you'll get your share, when you're a boy).
Repetition is deliberately jarring, a deadpan song about domestic violence. When Bowie sings about a Johnny, they're usually unlikeable, and this one takes out his disappointment on his wife. Red Money is right back in dotty Eno territory with a good dash of Alomar funk and is perfect Belew territory. We are looking at the unreal world of Fantastic Voyage and African Night Flight from the outside now, sniggering at the disasters obsessing the corporate mind, oblivious to greater disasters:
Like a nervous disease
And it's been there all along
It will tumble from the sky
It's been there all along
Project cancelled
Tumbling central
Red Money
Can you hear it fall
Can you hear it well
Can you hear it at all
...
Such responsibility
It's up to you and me
From the tone, Bowie doesn't expect anything to come of such a call to responsibility.
Like other albums I've reviewed here, this is another transitional album, the last of the great Bowie collaborations. No more Eno, and more significantly no more Alomar, and less experimentation lay in the future. There is a thread running between Lodger and Scary Monsters, the latter continuing Lodger's themes but much darker bothy lyrically and sonically, with Fripp and Levin replacing Belew and Murray (compare Ashes To Ashes with D.J. for instance). Scary Monsters ties up the hanging threads of Lodger, more directly attacking conformity in Fashion where Boys Keep Swinging only referred to uniforms. But more coherent than Low, less bleak and obscure than Heroes, Lodger deserves to be treated as a freestanding work in its own right, not tied to the previous albums and not an afterthought of a collaborative process whatever its commercial value.