Word: basses
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...screamers. McNeely's ferocious sax attacks coupled with some of Rock & Roll's earliest arrangements are powerful statements indeed. In a sense, this record hints at a very primative form of jazz rock: highly improvised yet controlled-by-the-arrangement sax playing is set against Jazz's traditional "walking bass" and pounded home with a solid 4/4 beat. Uplifiting stuff...
...befits the score for an upcoming film, One-Trick Pony has a consistent musical mood, sustained by a glossy studio sound which refines Fifties rock and r&b styles into a sophisticated whole. While Richard Tee's shimmering electric piano is overused and Tony Levin's bass lines are muddy at times, the overall sound mix is lovely, highlighting Simon's understated vocal manner to good effect. The basic tune-writing is strong--"Nobody" gently rocks to one of the prettiest melodies I've heard in ages. Simon put a lot of care into the composing, arranging and recording...
...MUSIC BOWIE employs on Scary Monsters matches this consciousness of sub-terranean gloom: it is shuddering, dissonant, ponderous, complex. "Scream Like a Baby" opens with a thud from George Murray's bass and a wail from Bowie; then, to a leaden bass drum beat and descending synthesized tones it tells a story of pointless assimilation...
Elsewhere Bowie uses ballads ("Teenage Wildfire"), funk ("Fashion"), and pop ("Up the Hill Backwards") to deliver his dejection. But the dominant musical scheme of Scary Monsters is a more accessible, refined edition of Bowie's sound on Heroes--guitar screams and synthesizer whooshes on top and an aggressively precise bass on bottom frame Bowie's vocal trapeze act, which swings from throaty baritone to wide-open tenor with effort but control...
...opening night the answer was no. Dozens of critics and musicians disputed the long reverberation time, the strident brass, the puddles of aural mud. Too much depended on one's location in the auditorium. The bass was usually too strong. (That is good; after 18 years and expensive tinkering, New York's Avery Fisher Hall-the Titanic of postwar acoustics -still has a mumbling bass.) In general the sound seems too bright and unfocused. That, however, is better than starting out with a dead hall...