Word: songs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Whether administering lumps, re-examining old romances or launching new crusades, Parker's music has rediscovered its spirit and vigor. "Even if the subject of the song is depressing," Parker reflects, "I want to turn it into a celebration, in the sense that whatever it is, you can at least sing about it. That's what rock 'n' roll is anyway-a celebration." A large part of what it is, anyhow. And as a celebrator, as a seeker after fool's gold and as a straight-ahead rocker, Graham Parker makes the kind of music...
What Bowie has learned from his extended association with Eno is how to manipulate the texture of each song. In the first song on Lodger, a saccharine ballad decrying the possibility of nuclear war called "Fantastic Voyage," the sound is gloppy and sweet--Eno is responsible for providing "ambient drone," the record jacket tells us. For the next track, a weird patter-song called "African Night Flight," his contribution is "prepared cricket menace." Elsewhere on the album he offers work on the Eroica horn or the horse trumpet...
...African Night Flight," Lodger's most interesting song, Bowie becomes a British pilot pushing his luck somewhere in Central Africa. Bowie spits out syllables like gunfire, Eno's crickets' chatter, the band thumps out a halting beat, and Eno chants Swahili in the background. If you heard it on your car radio, you'd probably switch the station, and if you heard it on a transistor radio you'd think you were between stations--but on a good stereo, maybe with headphones, you just might be up there over Mombassa, running guns or running out of fuel...
...elevates them and makes them memorable. "Look Back in Anger" shares the dramatic singing and anxious music, tosses in lyrics about the angel of death and Beatles-like backing vocals, and tops it off with Eno's virtuoso performance on several obscure instruments to become the album's best song...
...these are probably not the songs you'll hear first; radio stations have chosen "D.J." and "Boys Keep Swinging" for airplay. "D.J." is the most commercial and least interesting song on Lodger--Bowie's vocal acrobatics are impressive, but the music is in the same style as, and not much of an advance on, that of Young Americans. "Boys Keep Swinging" sets the throbbing electronic pulse of "Heroes" to lyrics that sound like Bowie's answer to the Village People. He's always skirted the epicene, of course, and this is just a bit of harmless camp, but it seems...