"Scary Monsters' is the realist's Bowie album . . . this is a time in which an intelligent person does well to be afraid"

......Learning to live with somebody's depression: the man in the clown suit stops running, finds self in back-against-wall situation, attempts to deal with same. 'Scary Monsters' depicts David Bowie unpacking after his 'Lodger' phase, rationalizing (or not, as the case may be) the current contents of his suitcase and taking stock of his surroundings.

......Or, put it another way, 'Scary Monsters' is the 1980 long-playing David Bowie record, the latest installment in rock's longest and loudest internal dialogue.

......Bowie has had what is by far the most interesting career of anybody in his field over the last ten years: no-one else has contracted so many modern diseases and displayed such a variegated set of symptoms. His art (and we can call it that, since the term is now sufficiently neutralized to carry no value judgments whatsoever) is a useful one; his snapshots are taken from angles sufficiently unlike those selected by others to enable him to use the devices they pioneered without plagiarizing their work, and he leaves enough debris in his wake for younger artists to make their names by tidying up after him.

......Here there be monsters: fears both large and trivial, a few breaks and gaps in that old closed circuit, a few good noises and a tangled, verbose approach to songwriting.

......With 1977's 'Low', Bowie broke the mirror and smashed the increasingly cumbersome songwriting mechanism that he had been constructing and developing since the 'David Bowie 1969' album. In 1980 Major Tom's is revealed as fraudulent and illusory (just as Bowie's 'escape' via withdrawal on 'Low' was) and the latter-day Bowie 'soun' (a grinding, dissonant, treacherous, chilling noise where standard rock tonalities are twisted until their messages are changed) reaches its apogee.

......Desperate measures for desperate times: The first version begins with a selection of mechanical noises (someone launching a boat with an outboard motor? Enlightment awaited w/bated breath) and Bowie already at the end of his tether. As he sings the lyrics in English, his manner becoming increasingly overwrought, Michi Hirota spits and snarls a Japanese translation around him in a manner as sulphurous as degrading, "To be insulted be these fascists is so degrading, "Bowie announces, 'It's No Game (#1). The tracks ends with a sublimely perverse Fripp guitar loop, repeated almost insultingly as Bowie screams, "Shut up!" to no avail until the whole thing cuts off.

......The closing version implies-disquietingly-a far more tranquil acceptance of the nearness of defeat.

......Bowie does not recommend passivity, but he extends little hope of victory, discussing "The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom / and the possibilities it seems to offer" on 'Up The Hill Backwards' with a sardonic, repeated refrain "It's got nothing to with you / if you can grasp it," after a harsh Bo Diddley intro harking back to 'Panic In Detroit'.

......'Ashes To Ashes' is book-ended by two of the album's most striking pieces: 'Scary Monsters and Super Creeps' is Bowie's 'She's Lost Control' and 'Fashion' eerily echoes 'Fame'.

......The title track first: Bowie uses his Bewaly Brothers cockney voice to rehearse the plight of the song's heroine with a casual, off-hand cruelty. That synthesized drum sound premiered on 'Low' bounces in and out like post-mutant Spectrosound and Bowie uses a synth-processed vocal to give the chorus a peculiarly nasty sibilance. Wait till Grace Jones gets hold of this one: "She'd opened strange doors that we'd never open again / She began to wail, jealousies scream / waiting at the lights, know what I mean?"

......'Ashes To Ashes' reintroduces the 'It's No Game (#1)' device of the 'Other' voice parroting the lyrics and, to cop a line from 'Game' , it "draw(s) the blinds on yesterday and it's all so much scarier." The literal-mindedness with which Bowie dismantles as many aspects of his myth as he can reach is oddly cheering.

......In 'Fashion', Bowie re-explores anti-disco, and will probably get another disco hit for his pains. The song takes the 'reactionary' attitude to fashion (i.e. that it is something imposed from outside and above), but it's got a fine, direct lyric (and a good grind, you can twitch to it), closing off another avenue of escape right from the opening synth pulse-like the whine of tormented animal-which introduces Fripp's clenched sawtooth guitar.

......Over on the second side, Bowie permits one of his characters to address him by his real name. A retroactive memo to self, 'Teenage Wildlife' is impeccably scatching:". . . As ugly as a teenage millionaire / pretending in a whiz kid world / And you'll take me aside / and say/ David what shall I do / then wait for me in the hallway / and I'll say don't ask me I don't know any hallways."

......On the run again, Bowie announces that he feels like "a group of one": a confession, not a boast. At a time when unity is strength is what we need, the 'glamour' of the outsider is hollower than ever, but Bowie doesn't necessarily have the luxury of the choice. The song recaptures something of the dreamy drift of Heroes', and Fripp's guitar is ridiculously romantic, but speeded up to a nagging pitch of intensity.

......Logically enough, the plight of the political prisoner and the social/sexual outlaw is explored on 'Scream Like A Baby ': Bowie plays cheif Broom to the McMurphy of the song's hero, Sam, who "sat in the back seat swearing he'd seek revenge / but he jumped into the furnace singing old songs we loved" while Bowie himself closes his eyes and "I'm learning to be a part of society." There is an extremely effective use of overdubbed varispeed vocals on the crucial section of the lyrics, technofans: watch out for this technique on your favorite artist's next effort.

......Salvation is the carrot which always remains the same distance from your nose however fast and hard you run: Bowie interprets Tom Verlaine's 'Kingdom Come' with as awful, wracked intensity that he only brings to very few other moments on the album (notably the first version of 'It's No Game (#1), and afterwards even a cameo guitar intro from the inimitable Pete Townshend seems anticlimactic. An absolute trademark Townshend lick kicks 'Because You're Young' into gear as love "back to front and no sides" turns into another blind alley. Superficially related to 'Boys Keep Swinging' but without even the Petit Guignol irony that left the listener cheering Bowie on as he demolished the masculine stereotype, we find Young Love hallowed out and desperate, and leading straight into an understated 'It's No Game (#2)' stripped of the clutter, the blabber'n'smoke and the Japanese trappings.

......'Scary Monsters' is shorn of all hope, yet it represents a call to arms. It is an album which presupposes defeat, yet it is unashmadely and unequivocally confrontional (can this be the modern negative positivism that we've heard about?). There are "no free steps to heaven", yet it's time to roll. The album is harsh, strained, inelegant, cluttered, verbose, elliptical, yet Bowie communicates with an honesty and directness that suggests that an informed pessimism can be more inspiring-in real terms-than any obtuse optimistic fantasy.

......'Scary Monsters' is the realist's Bowie album. John Cale may have said 'Fear Is A Man's Best Friend' First, but Bowie says it best. This is a time in which an intelligent person does well to be afraid. To know fear but not be conquered by it is the response that is needed now . . . even from a man in a clown suit.

One morning, David b. awoke and found himself transformed into . . . What? Who; David Jones? Ziggy? The Thin White Duke? The Elephant Man?

.....As one of the few major artists of the Seventies to come through the punk backlash without egg completely obscuring his skeletal features, David Bowie has proved he still has the capacity to astound, antagonize and change. In the essentially ephemeral world of rock 'n' roll, to stay in one place too long is to court disaster. Various mega-bands remain immutable, any radical change in their music threatens to alienate their audience. Unused to deviation, they like to know what to expect. It's on the lack of change that their power base is built and consolidated.

.....But Bowie's audience expect change, and Bowie has rarely let them down. His metamorphoses are as keenly awaited as a total eclipse of the sun. He has been able to diversify into film, with varying degrees of success, and theatre - where his performance as "The Elephant Man" has recently received lavish critical praise in Amerika - but Bowie is drawn remorselessly back to records.

....."Scary Monsters" is David Bowie's first musical venture of the new decade. The stamp he left on the 70s is unquestioned. Times change, but can Bowie keep ahead of them?

.....It's an eerily impressive Bowie that strides into the eighties, and his latest album is perhaps his most accessible for many years. The diversity of the material is reflected in the musicians Bowie has chosen to work with. His basic band of Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray is swelled by Roy Bittan, of Springsteen's E.Street Band, on piano, and Robert Fripp and Pete Townshend on guitars.

.....In an age jaundiced by shock and outrage, one wonders what Bowie can do to retain and tantalise his audience. The devoted fan will, nevertheless, welcome the very sound of his master's voice. Bowie, as musical innovator, has hurled the gauntlet down on numerous occasions, and this time his attempt at tickling the palette of expectation is to have the first track on the album opening with Michi Hirota singing in Japanese!

....."It's No Game (#1)" has contributions from Bowie - in English. The song, reprised in a more subdued version on side two, is peppered with apocalyptic visions, where "shadows watch the revolution," where there are "no free steps to heaven," where "people have their fingers broken/To be insulted by these fascists", while Bowie gravely intones "It's no game".

.....The first version is remarkable, featuring a crazed vocal performance from Bowie, ending with an hysterical "shut up!" Easy listening it certainly isn't, but it's undeniably possessed with an innate sneering fury, and power.

.....Comparisons - particularly in Bowie's unique case - are redundant. "Scary Monsters" recalls no specific Bowie album, but what is fascinating are the references to his past. The back of the album sleeve incorporates visual references to the covers of "Low", "Heroes" and "Lodger". The most obvious lyrical example is contained on "Ashes To Ashes", with its iconoclastic allusion to dear old Major Tom, which reminds me of seeing Bowie for the first time at The Three Tuns in Beckenham, in late 69.

.....Vocally, too, earlier incarnations are hinted at; most notably on the album's title track, which is a nod back towards the world of Anthony Newly, with Bowie's overt cockney inflections sounding almost like Ian Dury at times.

.....Lyrically, Bowie remains as inscrutable as ever, rarely allowing the listener access to anywhere save the periphery of his world. Employing an almost daunting use of electronics, Bowie creates a chilling series of images, seemingly obsessed with paranoid visions of a totalitarian future.

.....Significantly, on "I'm learning to be a part of society", from "Scream Like A Baby", Bowie falters, initially unable to pronounce the crucial last word. There are sporadic "personal" references: "David, what shall I do? They wait for me in hallways/And I'll say don't ask me, I don't know any hallways" (from "Teenage Wildlife"), "I'm okay, you're so-so" ("Up The Hill Backwards") and the ironic "I love the little girl, I'll love her till the day she dies" (from "Scary Monsters").

....."Fashion" - a subject long associated with Bowie - has him eschewing a specific role: "Listen to me - Don't listen to me/talk to me - Don't talk to me". The only non-original song is former Television personality Tom Verlaine's "Kingdom Come", which Bowie somehow transform into a strangely romantic piece, despite its chilling vision of a future with mile-high walls and breaking rocks "until the Kingdom comes".

.....Musically, Bowie manages to create a Berlin Wall of sound, almost intimidating in its ferocity, but with sufficient softer interludes to introduce a mellow tinge into the music, with Robert Fripp's guitar on "Teenage Wildlife" especially notable. Forget Frippertronics and his march to 1984 or any other sundry pretensions, just listen to Fripp's awesomely restrained guitar playing on that track.

....."Scary Monsters" displays Bowie back in virtually complete control of his distinctive musical destiny. Cracks were appearing in the facade on "Lodger", but the cracks now appear to have been sealed. "Monsters" incorporates elements of early Bowie, the "Hunky Dory"-ish "Up The Hill Backwards", the disco rhythms of "Fashion", the "Heroes" style of "Teenage Wildlife" and the later electronic fascination on "Because You're Young" (replete with tasty Townshend guitar). But it is all freshly reinterpetreted here.

.....It's David Bowie on nodding terms with his past, but, as ever, more concerned with - and able to face - the unknown future.

Though the LP begins with a song in Japanese, this should be the most accessible and commercially successful Bowie LP in year; Bowie has synthesized and made his own recent musical developments while at the same time recalling his own early '70s man from outer space personna. Gone are the long dark electronic passages that have characterized recent Bowie LPs. They are replaced by short, comparitively uptempo tunes that are melodic though no less sophisticated. Helping out on guitars on many of the songs is Robert Flipp and Peter Townshend on "Because You're Young." Best cuts: "Ashes To Ashes," "Scary Monsters," "Scream Like A Baby," "Because You're Young," "It's No Game."

After the Brian Eno-assisted trilogy of Low, Heroes and Lodger, 1980's Scary Monsters proved David Bowie could survive without the former's studious ingenuity while retaining a futurist brief and injecting a more essentially rock'n'pop brief, which paid off greater commercial dividends. A more confrontational, audacious set than Lodger, the success rate is constant-It's No Game's jarring, visceral rock, Up The Hill Backwards' off-kilter poppiness, the title track's helter-skeltery spin, Ashes To Ashes' divine dream-pop melancholy (and David Bowie's second Number 1) and Fashion's merciless funk riffing. Throughout, Bowie is in superb voice, and lyrically candid and increasingly politicised to boot. The drawback is the extra tracks-only one is new, a surprisingly mild and frankly unfunky restoration of Panic In Detroit from 1979, although the instrumental prettiness of the 1980 Japanese-only single Crystal Japan makes for a tranquil conclusion.
Q Rating: ****