David Bowie - Outside (1995)

tvc15

Junior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2017
Posts
3
Reaction score
0
Disclamier: This is a long review (only takes 5 mins to read tbf though) on a divisive album from an artist i assume is not too popular in classic rock circles so i do appreciate your time if you decide to read it all. You should if you're interested in learning more about Bowie. I put my heart into it. Thanks.

The best thing that can be said about 1995's Outside is that it is an interesting album. Weighing in at an 1 hour and 14 minutes, Outside is David Bowie's bloated, flawed, and yet creatively rich mid 90's attempt to become artistically relevant again.

220px-Outsidebowie.jpg

During the 1980's, perhaps in part because of all that he had achieved during his untouchable and prolific golden years in the 70's, the Bowie of old took a back seat and turned in his artistic ambitions for mainstream appeal. By 1987, and after his supreme success with 1983's Lets Dance, Bowie had finally achieved the global super stardom which he had always desired, but at a great cost. Bowie had progressively lost his creative Midas touch and ambition, and without these it was as if the Bowie we once knew was truly six feet under.

So Fittingly enough, Outside is a ghastly, nightmarish, goth-noir portrait of an art-rocker in hell trying to shake the living by coming back to life. Teaming up again with old friend and experimental master, Brian Eno of Low (1977), Heroes (1977), and Lodger (1979) fame, Bowie set out to create an avant-garde rock album that served as a reminder that his fame as an influential and innovative artist was well deserved.

Onto the actual review...

Outside tries too many (flawed and misguided) things at once. It is a conceptual collage of death, murder, sex, mystery, and psychological horror, that tries to present itself as music album, novel, and theater; a "Non-Linear Gothic Drama Hyper-Cycle" as Bowie himself would describe. This weighs down an album with segues and an interwoven narrative that demands your complete attention in order to truly understand and appreciate it; but despite all this, the album contains a core handful of songs that do show what Bowie is capable of when he actually tries.

These are songs in which Bowie plays (like a vampire would with his victim's blood) with structure, texture, instrumentation, lyrics, and vocal performance in order to create dark and idiosyncratic avant-rock that challenges as much as rewards. Bowie steps into rambling, undecipherable, mournful, and meditative ambient electronica territory in one moment, ('"The Motel," "A Small Plot of Land")aggressive, paranoid, and sexy avant-dance rock the next ("The Heart's Filthy Lesson," "Hallo Spaceboy," "I Have Not Been to Oxford Town,") and even mixes both approaches ("The Voyeur of Utter Destruction, "Im Deranged") to satisfactory results.

These seven songs are the best in an album filled both with promise and disappointment, and if anything negative can be said about them is that they nonetheless could still have been tinkered with more structure and texture-wise than they were. You can identify the ideas behind them, but the actual results are not without fault.

An important thing to consider is that Bowie's original idea was to release a 3+ hour avant garde musical suite titled Leon, from which more than 20 hours of unreleased demo material still exists in Bowie's secretive vaults. For a variety of reasons Bowie was compelled to compromise his original plan and instead released Outside, a compromised album that tries to be experimental with the Billboard 200 still in sight nonetheless.

Ultimately, Outside is perhaps the most underappreciated work that Bowie ever produced, and with good reasons. It is an imperfect work, a rough draft, meant to show what the man was really made of, and it fits alongside some of Bowie's greatest works such as Station to Station, Diamond Dogs, Low, Heroes, Lodger, The Idiot, and Scary Monsters in terms of creative ambition.

Even better perhaps is that Bowie one day would actually come back to the ideas in Outside and make something better, something that truly sits up there with his prime work.

The Album...

Blackstar_%28Front_Cover%29.png

And here are the best renditions of my top 5 songs from Outside.
Thanks for reading and please leave your comments! :grinthumb









 
Last edited:

Magic

Woman of the World
Staff member
Administrator
Joined
Apr 20, 2009
Posts
24,793
Reaction score
4,533
Location
Ohio, USA
I will be honest, I haven't listened to this album.:omg:

I will say, though, you have written a very thorough and interesting review.
 

tvc15

Junior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2017
Posts
3
Reaction score
0
I will be honest, I haven't listened to this album.:omg:

I will say, though, you have written a very thorough and interesting review.

Thank you. If you're interested you should at least listen to the first 3 videos i posted as they give off the vibe of the project well.
 

Find member

Forum statistics

Threads
30,659
Posts
1,064,940
Members
6,353
Latest member
edmerka

Members online

No members online now.
Top