Summary: This is one of those cases where I had systematically made my way through the artist's catalogue, collecting all the albums along the way. I had purchased every album in Bowie's 70s output, and most of the rest...
There reaches a point when you become obsessed with an artist to the point where you run out of 'good' material to get newly acquainted with. Your thirst is insatiable, so you start reading about some of the artists supposed 'failures'. I did it with Neil Young too, buying stuff like 'Landing On Water'... generally considered by far the greatest piece of trash the man has ever released.
Yet there is still this almost morbid fascination that itches at me. I still crave to hear everything the artist has done, and naturally once I have bought everything generally considered worthwhile, my attention eventually consumed by these mysterious atrocities that often sit hidden in a period of the artist's career commonly forgotten.
And so, I find both `Tonight' and `Never Let Me Down' sandwiched together in a 2 for 1 package, priced to sell at about $9 (US)!!
When I put it on, I already knew it was gonna be horribly bad! I'd already read the reviews... I knew what I was in for. And yes, for the most part, this is pretty bland, and occasionally it's glaringly awful. But there are moments. We must remember... this is Bowie.
`Day In Day Out' is interesting to the extent that it packs a lot of sound into its arrangement. Lots of fun stereo panning and random noises fill the mix. `Time Will Crawl' is a reasonable tune (but still cant escape the 80s production). `Zeroes' is more texturally and sonically adventurous than anything else and is consequently more conspicuous (but not necessarily better). And as always, even when there is little else to grab your attention, Bowie ALWAYS has a stunning voice. Even on his least inspiring tracks, there is still a great voice to focus on.
However, there are points on this album (most of the second half) that are just rubbish. I have to point out `Shining Star' as a particular stand out for all the wrong reasons. This track is one of those "so bad that it's funny" types! The falsetto vocals, awful production and guest `rapper' Mickey Rourke all make for the most embarrassing thing that Bowie ever put to tape!
But I'll still listen to the album... It'll be rare, but I'll listen to it. The next time I go through a Bowie phase, I'll pull it out again, and get a little bit of value out of it.
So if you are a truly obsessive, completist fan, who feels the need to collect not only an artists great albums, but also their good ones, average ones, and eventually their abominations, then you'll probably end up doing just what I did! You'll read all the bad reviews (including mine!), buy it anyway, and then enjoy it briefly and scrape of few guilty pleasures out of it. Then you'll place it in the collection and treat it as an interesting (and kinda hilarious) historical sidenote in Bowie's long and intriguing career.
But it really is rubbish!
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