David Bowie 'hours...' VIRGIN CDV 2900
In 1999, there are those too young to remember British Rail, tenbob notes or the time you could uy a new David Bowie album without a creeping sense of dread. We may be stuck with privatised railways and decimal currency, but the Dame's latest long-player is, delightfully, just as good as they used to be. 'hours...' is a richly textured and emotionally vivid set. Contrast the faxed-in vocals and chattering beats of its predecessor, 1996's Earthling, or the conceptual stodge of '95's 1. Outside, to see the improvement. While Bowie has warned against seeing these songs as autobiographical - although they largely concern a man of his age, in bittersweet review of the passing years - they at least sound inhabited.

....For an artist who is always considered distant and contrived, Bowie is actually a master of operatic romance. Here Thursday's Child and If I'm Dreaming My Life have the emotional throb of his tremulous '70s ballads Can You Hear Me and Word On A Wing. The instrumental Brilliant Adventure, meanwhile, is a direct echo of side two of "Heroes". This time around, Bowie sounds influenced by nobody except himself, and he couldn't have picked a better role model.

One wonders just what David Bowie expects to find on the Internet. www.GucciPourHome.com? www.burroughsianlyriculike.com? or possibly www.rentacredpopstarmate.co.uk?

....Or perhaps the great man is convinced that there is some great secret residing deep within cyberspace which will eventually provide the elixir of creative rebirth. Hence this record will be available on the Internet a week before CD, and there is also the quite chilling prospect of he and his band appearing in a PC computer game called (oh yes indeed) Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Not just a new David Bowie album, but cybre-gifts for a new generation! Really Dad, you shouldn't have.

....But wait! It seems the fearless über - pseud warrior of the future has got back in touch with ground control. Why, some this sounds almost (gasp) old-fashioned!

New single 'Thursday's Child' sets the tone, with sir David in wistful, contemplative, nay downright melancholy mood. In fact, he sounds alarmingly like Stuart Staples from the tindersticks, all fragile maudlin vibrato, as he croons about how, "All of my life I tried so hard doing my best with what I had... maybe I'm born right out of my time". Is this earth David Bowie we're talking about here? Well, maybe it is for once. And it makes for quite splendid, sweeping stuff, somewhere between 'Ashes To Ashes' and Louis Armstrong's 'We Have All The Time In The World'. There's no sign of the zeitgeist-chasing menopausal self-consciousness, naff postmodernism or sci-fi pretension we've come to expect.

....Alas, the rest of this album is a pale imitation of the same moody magnificence. 'If I'm Dreaming My Life' has a certain dramatic presence and the echo of an epic tune, and 'Something In The Air' has a stuttery, nervously emotional grace to it, but elsewhere there's lots of bittersweet refelctions, minor chords and emotional atmospherics, but precious few memorable melodies. Meanwhile, every so often he attempts his old faux-Cockney voice or inserts some space noise, but it only serves, as ever of late, to make him look like mutton dressed as ham.

....The one other exception to that malaise is 'The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell', which writhes around a chugging designer metal riff and a glammy swagger you've already heard this man pull off in years.

....Otherwise, after all the future-hugging ideas and innovation-hungry experiments that have crippled Bowie's records in the 90's, 'Hours...' fails not through pretention, over-ambition or trying to be down with the kids, but through time-honoured mediocre songwriting. I think that's what they call irony. Let's hope it doesn't cath on.

"Mr B's 23rd solo album. One track, 'What's Really Happening?' features words written by the lucky fan who won a special work-with-Dave internet contest.

....Bowie's later career has been characterised by an increasingly ill-advised attempt to keep up with trends - on his last album, 'Earthling', he discovered drum'n'bass just as MFI were using it to flog chipboard wardrobes. But worry not, 'hours...' doesn't see Bowie doing big beat. Beginning with the declaration that "All of my life I've tried so hard, doing my best with what I had", this is Bowie finally conceding that his raving days are over.

....Musically it's a grown-up take on the acoustic balladry of early Bowie albums like 'Hunky Dory'. But while it's not as blatantly poor as 'Earthling', Bowie seems to have transformed himself into a more high-brow Sting. Even on the personal exorcism of 'Seven' there's a lack of urgency that suggests that the 'confessional' is just another style Bowie's trying out for size. Maybe he should've gone skate-rock after all. 2/5"

Never mind the premillennium panic, David Bowie seems to be saying on Hours..., let's try plaintive instead. Bowie's twenty-third album is as nakedly emotive a collection as anything in his iconic catalog; it's a summary statement from the man who invented postmodern rock & roll, so school is in session. But teacher is more concerned with baring wounds than with making big statements: "The pretty things are going to hell/They wore it out, but they wore it well" is as big as it gets. The sentiment sounds chucked from Johnny Rotten's diary, almost a kiss-off to the rock era. Bowie is probably the only cat around with the history, irony and distance to deliver that lyric as self-critique, death sentence, fond reminiscence and party favor all at the same time.

....Cranking the guitars up some would have made the Sex Pistols analogy more palpable, but it would have taken away from the album's general air of effervescent melancholy. Hours... contains that quite bearable lightness of being that comes with Bowie's position as a relevant older rock star. Having done his bit for future primitivism on his previous two conceptually frenzied outings, 1. Outside and Earthling, Bowie brings the curtain down on the century with a collection of songs that are just, well, hunky-dory. Members of the fan base will also hear echoes of Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Heroes, Low and even Tin Machine. First and foremost, though, the introspection of Hours... is a testament to the serenity that comes with legend status, maturity and endurance.

....As was the case with Miles Davis in jazz, Bowie has come not just to represent his innovations but to symbolize modern rock as an idiom in which literacy, art, fashion, style, sexual exploration and social commentary can be rolled into one. While this isn't an idea without its heirs apparent -- the names Corgan, Reznor and Manson come to mind -- Bowie makes it all seem so damn easy.

....Hours... wafts into the room, breezily delivers its angsty arabesques and afterlife lullabies, and then luminously bows out in a succinct 45:42. Confessional highlights include "Survive," with its fragile failed paramour, and "Thursday's Child," about a life of despair saved by true love. On these songs, Bowie's voice, darker and woodier in timbre than usual and on the verge of tears, strains over music gently suggestive of elevator Philly soul and the ghost of Phillipe Wynn: "Shuffling days and lonesome nights/Sometimes my courage fell to my feet/Lucky old sun is in my sky/Nothing prepared me for your smile."

....As always, Bowie's eccentric sense of melody twists around the ear like a space oddity, getting under the skin, plucking the heartstrings and stirring up feelings of alienation we never knew we had. Bowie's longtime partner in crime, guitarist Reeves Gabrels, takes a co-writer credit on everything here. Their fertile collaboration yields settings full of atmosphere, spunk, grit and nuance; Hours... is an album that improves with each new hearing. Just when all the pretty young things might have thought their world was safe from Jurassic intrusion, here comes Bowie, staking an unshakable claim on rock's brave next world. Hours... is further confirmation of Richard Pryor's observation that they call them old wise men because all them young wise men are dead. ****

"Another David Bowie album, another chance to marvel at the Oz-like impotence of this once noble, once questing performer, whose ardent pursuit of the title Biggest Buffoon in Christendom, seems to know no bounds. 'hours...' the first fruit of a new deal with Virgin, is being positioned by the label as a successor to Hunky Dory; ie straightforward songs with tunes, like wot he used to sing in the old days. Back in the real world, it's actually Bowie's most pointless and desultory record since Tin Machine II, a grim farrago of lumpen, post-grunge sessioneering (ringmaster: tiresome, overindulged avant-guitarist Reeves Gabrels), home studio synthesised strings (arranging songs properly is so boring, isn't it) and cliched autobiographical, lyrics (as if anyone cared).

....Thursday's Child, the single, attempts to lasso our interest with a contrivedly angular chord progression, then blows it by deciding it's so clever, it can bloody well get to the chorus without a proper bridge (By contrast, the songcraft on Hunky Dory is meticulous - that's why people like it so much). What's Really Happening, with words by some bloke from Wisconsin who won a competition to co-write a song with the Dame, has a Low-ish menace that's borderline beguiling. Brilliant Adventure is an Eastern-tinged instrumental. Devotees will be interested to know that our hero adopts throughout a fey, strangulated version of the psychotic cockney, voice ("E ad an orror of rooms) employed to greatest effect on Scary Monsters, an album reckoned to be hot stuff when I was a tot. I'm assuming everyone else stopped reading at the beginning of the first paragraph."

Now that he's fifty something, it's no surprise to find that Bowie has moved on from dabbling in beats and has returned to his old themes of time and change. Hours finds Bowie in introspective mood, examining his past lives and wondering if he has created anything of value for the future . Something In The Air, New Angels Of Promise and Brilliant Adventure lean towards the Heroes/Lodger/ Scary Monsters era, while Seven harks back to Hunky Dory days. The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell, however, proves that Bowie is not about to indulge in neo-futurist nostalgia, while What's Really Happening, with lyrics written by a lucky subscriber to the Bowie website, shows that the Dame still has one eye on the next millennium.

STEVE PAFFORD TAKES A LOOK AT DAVID BOWIE'S NEW ALBUM, "HOURS . . . ", TO SEE WHETHER HE STILL LOVES THE ALIEN

So what to make of the latest Bowie album, then? Well, immediately, the title demands your attention. Is he just misspelling "Heroes" or what?

Earlier this year, David would have been buoyed by readers polls in The Sun and America's Entertainment Weekly naming him the No. 1 Music Star Of The Century and the No.1 Classic Solo Artist of all time, respectively. The latter poll is especially interesting, with Bowie cruising to pole position with a whopping 35% of the vote, more than double his nearest rival, Barbra Streisand-sweet revenge for her questionable covers of "Life On Mars" and "Under The God", no doubt- and, more importantly, nudging Elvis into third. The Classic Solo Artist poll seems timely, as "hours. . ." is very much Bowie in a classic singer-songwriter sort of guise; and he's not going for the younger listener in the way that he did with "Earthling". A few years back, Bowie admitted: "I actually revolt against the last album that I made, especially if it's been successful. It seems, in hindsight, I always want to do the very opposite of what that last album did, just for my own satisfaction as an artist." And he's keeping his word. "hours. . ." is the complete antithesis of its critically acclaimed predecessor.

"Something In The Air", with its deranged vocals, is the song the Elephant Man would be singing if he were alive today.

This is a set of songs for David's own generation. Which is surprising, as eight of these songs are featured in a futuristic new computer game, The Nomad Soul (Omikron in the US), that portrays Bowie morphed back 20 years. It's hard to imagine, hardcore fans excepted, many fortysomethings rushing out to claim their copy. The album is intriguingly titled "hours. . .", but is it one of his finest? Let's explore. . .

BACK TO BASICS

"hours. . ." is Bowie's twenty-second solo studio set, his first for two-and-a-half years, and his last of the millennium. Produced by Bowie and long-standing sidekick, Reeves Gabrels, the album is a return to more traditional, formal methods of recording. In the past year, Bowie and Gabrels set up special writing and acoustic demo sessions in Bermuda and Paris specifically for the interlinking album and game projects. Unlike most of Bowie's material this decade, these were to be structured, melodic songs to be recorded, but not written, in the studio. The most striking thing about "hours. . ." is how atypically accessible the songs are. Now that he's signed a new worldwide deal with Virgin it's almost as if Bowie thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to give a potential new record label something a little more conventional, in the same way in which "Let's Dance" and "Black Tie White Noise", both largely recorded out of contract, would be so much more commercial than "Scary Monsters" or "Tin Machine II", for instance. "hours . . ." could well be the album that will appeal to those record-buyers who own "Let's Dance", "Ziggy Stardust" and "Hunky Dory", and, the odd hits collection aside, not much more of his work.

An artist sometimes needs to produce a more public-pleasing album in order to pursue less popular and more experimental endeavors, and "hours . . ." firmly falls into this category. But how did the interlinked album and computer game projects come about? As Reeves Gabrels tells me: "We originally wrote six vocal songs and a bunch of instrumental pieces in Bermuda for the Omikron game. Of those instrumental ideas, we completed about six for the game. We then continued to write another eight vocal tracks for the 'hours . . .' album. Simultaneously, while co-producing and co-writing with David all the songs on 'hours . . .', I continued to work with the Eidos/Quantic Dream people (the game's producers) and by mid-August, I had written another 25 or so instrumental songs for the game on my own. Somehow, I managed to write over three hours' worth of instrumental music, in varying permutations, in addition to the 55 minutes worth of music which David and I had originally written together and given to them. The instrumental tracks are more electronic and aggressive in nature than the 'hours . . .' album, and are titled according to the scenes in which they're used. I expect that at some point in 2000 there will be an Omicron, The Nomad Soul instrumental album of the music I wrote."

FAR TO GO

As for "Thursday's Child", the lead-off single from the album, "Thursday's child is Sunday's clown," sang Nico on "All Tomorrow's Parties", but I would hardly agree with that, seeing as I was born on a Thursday, as was Bowie's mum, Peggy. As we should all know off by heart from the old traditional rhyme, Thursdays child has far to go-and it didn't do badly here at all. "Thursday's Child" is Bowie's 35th Top 20 single in the UK, and if you include his work with Tin Machine, his 65th chart hit in all. That honorary bus pass from the Guinness Book Of Hit Singles should be dropping on his doormat any day now. The song itself has a gorgeous, old-fashioned melody run-down of the weekdays in the chorus, and yes, the vulnerability in the vocals are a hark back to "Hunky Dory", though not necessarily quite as fluted. They do also remind me of some of Bowie's mid 60s mod pieces. Bowie was born on Wednesday, by the way.

"Something In The Air", with its electronically treated, slightly deranged vocals is eerie. To me, this is the song the Elephant Man would be singing if he were alive today. The track also features some great sedate and sinuous Gabrels guitar work that immediately recalls "Seven Years In Tibet" and, with a fake "John I'm Only Dancing"-style outro half-way through, Mick Ronson at his best. "Survive" is Bowie finding his half-cockney Anthony Newley voice again, and is reminiscent of "The London Boys", probably the best track from Bowie's '67 debut, and the height of his Newley affliction. Indeed, when I interviewed David's old costumier chum, Natasha Kornilof, recently, she revealed that Bowie would actually earn his bread and butter back then by actually recording Newley's demo discs so that the former Mr Joan Collins could choose which songs he liked enough to want to record with an orchestra.

WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING

"Survive" sounds like a possible single, ~Seven" even more so; a beautiful, reflective acoustic ballad with sexy slide guitar. Seven may well be Bowie's lucky number, and its title got me thinking: "Dead Man Walking", "Fantastic Voyage", "Velvet Goldmine" - Bowie's always had a penchant for nicking movie titles for his songs, and "Seven" is no exception, although this track marks the first time hes thieved from a movie that featured one of his own tracks! (1995's "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" was the closing theme of David Fincher's serial thriller, Se7en). The intro also reminds me of the acoustic version of "Heroes" that Bowie was performing in 1996. While "If I'm Dreaming My Life" is a pleasant enough piece, it is a little overlong and is the kind of ditty Dave could toss off in his sleep (as it were). "What's Really Happening" is faintly reminiscent of "Dodo", and boasts some fabulous "Low"-era searing guitar. The song made music history by being the featured track in last year's web contest where thousands of songwriter wannabes and internet junkies submitted verse Iyrics online to add to David's already written chorus. Winner Alex Grant from Ohio (who receives a co-writer's credit), also provides back-ups with his friend Larry, and must be chuffed to bits at the song's last minute inclusion on the album.

Stomping glam robotic rocker "The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell" started out life as an instrumental track that Reeves wrote for The Nomad Soul late last year. It's already a single outside of Europe, and must surely be considered as one here, too. A remixed version of the song is included on the soundtrack to a new supernatural thriller, Stigmata, so a tie-in when the film hits these shores must be the way forward.

Even better is "New Angels Of Promise", probably the track that will appeal to the die-hards, featuring as it does an "Outside"style guitar build up on the intro, a touch of "The In Crowd", and vocals that could have been lifted straight from 1979's "Yassassin". There's also some exquisite Beatley harmonies (very "Walrus"/Peppery) and a namecheck for Elvis' finest moment, "Suspicious Minds". "Brilliant Adventure" is one of those brooding instrumentals which still infatuate Bowie from time to time, and this short serene piece with koto will immediately evoke "Moss Garden" and "Crystal Japan", though this is far less electronic. The descending outro is also similar to Kate Bush's "Babooshka", and leads nicely into "The Dreamers". But which dreamers are we talking about here? "Army Dreamers"? Freddie And The Dreamers? No, perhaps it's Steve Strange's old beat combo, Visage, as each time I listen to the intro chimes, I'm instantly transported to "Mind Of A Toy". There are moody synths (think 1982's "Cat People", minus the Toyahisms) and contorted vocals. Could there also be hints at the Aboriginal dreamtime in there? (has DB been listening to a lot of Kate Bush lately, then?).

All in all, a well structured album, full of little reminiscences, and disarmingly honest in it approach. But if I am allowed to make one complaint, it is that it simply isn't long enough. In the words of his old mucker Iggy, "I Need More".

Special thanks to Reeves Gabrels and Tony Visconti for their help with these two features. Reeves' second solo album, "Ulysses (della notte)" is now available exclusively as an M-PEG download from his website (www.reevesgabrels.com), and includes "Jewel", a four-way vocal spar between Bowie, Frank Black, Dave Grohl and Gabrels.

For details of Crankin' Out, Steve Pafford's irregular but really excellent international David Bowie magazine, send SAE / IRC to PO Box 3268, London, NW6 4NH, UK.