Rating:  -
I like this album a lot. No, it's not a "Low" or a "Scary Monsters", but it's still darn good. Unfortunately, this album is often forgotten when people talk about Bowie's fantastic 70's. The album has two halves (sides), the first one is so-so, and most of the songs are annoying, although "Red Sails" is growing on me. Then something wonderful happens. One a row, we get "DJ", "Look back in anger", "Boys Keep Swinging", and "Reptetion", all stellar tracks displaying Bowie at his best! I particularly like "Boys Keep Swinging", one of my all time Bowie favorites, and the dark, cynical "Repetition" gets better every time you listen to it.
My only complaint is that the album is fairly short. It clocks in at merely 35 min, but then again, the last 18 min alone are worth the price of the CD! Bonus points for the creative (and disturbing?) album art! :)
Rating: -
...makes this release all the more interesting.
David Bowie was coming to a crossroad w/ Brian Eno. Bowie felt he had to take some control back of his own work which starts to show as Eno's presence isn't that predominant as on the past 2 releases prior. Gone from the album are ambient workouts like "Moss Garden" and "Art Decade". Instead the work showed a greater interest in twisting strange atmospheres into pop songs which would foreshadow the best parts of New Wave, as well as touching upon the post-punk movement that was running along the side of it at the same time.
The opener "Fantastic Voyage" is excellent, almost an overture to the rest of the LP, acting like an updated song from "Three Penny Opera". A cousin to "5 Years". "African Night Flight" has often been sited as bizarre but its one of the best tracks on Lodger (if not in his career) that puts an agressive view to world music, just like the Talking Heads would do in Remain In Light a year later. The rest of the songs travel in and out foreign lands, haphazzard fashions, regret and sexual politics (of being a boy and abuse). "Repetition" is one of the most point blank views on marital abuse ever (which was later cover by the feminist punkers The Au Pairs). The voyage ends on a sour prediction about the decade greed that was to come our way in the 1980s ("Red Money").
Of course, the record company robs us of "I Pray, Ole" in this remastered reissue. But noticing the current rate of the anniversary packaged albums being produced maybe we'll see something (however I wouldn't hold my breath).
I understand why many wouldn't think this is Bowie's best work, especially looking at his whole career. But for some reason every time I listen to it I feel that it is my favorite one.
Definitely overlooked, so please give it a try.
Rating: -
Bowie returns to melody and narrative for this funky excursion into exotic musical forms.
Many of the songs describe wanderers--perhaps a metaphor for Bowie's philosophical wanderings?
Rating: -
Lodger is far more uplifting than it's precessors Low and "Heroes", and toys with worldly influences instead of with dark and broody instrumentals. Those influences work well, though it's no Graceland. At times the album doesn't sound as inspired as Low and most of "Heroes" does, and it lacks real standout tracks, but as a whole it's a very fun and fairly good album. Worth listening to any day.
Rating:  -
Not as experimental as "Heroes", his previous album, and not as accessible as the following 'Scary Monsters', 'Lodger' tends to be forgotten nowadays, which is okay; everything is forgotten eventually, might as well get it over with quickly. Only the other day I realised that I had forgotten David Lynch, the film director, who was huge in the early 1990s. Lodger's first side is very weak, and it's a shame that the current version of the CD doesn't have the bonus tracks that came out a while back, but hey. I realise now that I had also forgotten Laura Dern. She's old now. It's easy to see that a bunch of early-80s acts had this album, specifically Gary Numan, Ultravox and the like, although Lodger has very few synths.
Lodger has a slick, early-80s production which thankfully does not extend to synth drums, although there is what sounds like fretless bass on a few tracks. The top standout is 'Look Back in Anger', which is excellent, and was accompanied with an equally-good extended version on the previous release of the album, now gone. The other bonus track was 'I Pray, Ole', a terrible title which was nonetheless a catchy little song. 'Boys Keep Swinging' is the one they play on television, and it's fun but fairly trivial; 'DJ' has oblique lyrics which have nothing to do with dinner jackets at all ("he used to be my boss, and here he is a puppet dancer!" is a good line). 'Repetition' is a throw-back to the paranoid, edgy songs that were on 'Low', specifically 'Breaking Glass'; "I guess the bruises won't show / if she wears long sleeves". 'Red Money' is one of those boring slow songs where you envisage the band nodding their heads and high-fiving in the studio, because musicians love kicking out boring slow jams almost as much as they sicken my stomach.
The first side isn't as good. 'Red Sails' has a nice wispy synth part, but has a terrible 'oriental' melody, whilst both 'African Night Flight' and 'Yassassin' dabble with what would become 'world music' but not very well. 'Fantastic Voyage' sounds like a rewrite of 'Word on a Wing' from 'Station to Station'. 'Move On' is quite good, with what sounds like a backwards vocal solo - there are lots of tricky experimental touches on the album - but it comes and goes, phfft.
That's it, I can stop now.
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