My Bowie education continues with a recent online second hand purchase (I do love curling up with an iPad and Music Magpie after a few drinks).
I've heard many people name this as their Bowie favourite, his first top ten album and the first after his 1971 New York trip in which he hooked up with long time friends Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.
And, as with any Bowie album of the 1970s, even if I haven't heard the album before, I already know plenty of the songs. So I'm very familiar with the first couple - the powerful hit single Changes, and the lighter Oh! You Pretty Things, which had been a hit for Peter Noone but feels far more intense with Bowie's sparse piano accompaniment in the verses.
Eight Line Poem seems to drag a bit, and certainly won't make my list of Bowie favourites, but it's a pleasant, gentle tune, however Life On Mars wakes the listener up, still fantastic, half a century later. As is the jaunty Kooks, light and airy, without getting over-sentimental. Quicksand however sounds over-produced, with annoying strings, and I far prefer the version with just acoustic guitar, which is a CD extra here. Fill Your Heart has a bit of a music hall feel, but is quite compelling.
I could do without the studio clowning at the start of Andy Warhol, but it's still a fine song, as is Song For Bob Dylan, merging Dylan themes with a very 1970s glam arrangement - and if it's 1970s glam you want, Queen Bitch delivers that, with Mick Ronson's guitar to the fore, just fantastic. And I'm really not sure what to make of The Bewlay Brothers - it feels like a classic 'slow, long, impenetrable finale', and it's very successful in that.
This CD reissue also includes the lively and interesting Bombers (apparently originally intended for the album, but replaced last minute by Fill Your Heart). and The Supermen, a dark narrative acoustic number, where the band raise the decibels for the chorus, as well as a couple of alternative versions.
I've enjoyed listening to this album, but it isn't one of my Bowie greats - there's very little here that I hadn't heard before that has made me sit up and listen. But it's still a very good album.
3* - a very good album, certainly worth re-visiting