17th December - David Bowie's Hunky Dory

Artist – Album: David Bowie – Hunky Dory

Released: 17^th December 1971

Sounds Like: Getting the ball rolling 

For one of the most successful and influential artists in pop history, David Bowie didn’t half get off to a slow start. Although he scored a big hit in 1969 with ‘Space Oddity’, the Thin White Duke spent the following years being viewed as just a one hit wonder, a bit of an oddity himself. His next few albums, Space Oddity and The Man Who Fell to Earth, met with little fanfare and it was no surprise that Hunky Dory – despite hosting ‘Changes’ and ‘Life on Mars?’ for goodness sake – also came and went without much attention. Then, in ’72, came The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and suddenly the world was ready for super-Starman Bowie. Fans clamouring for more releases were sated when Bowie, in true Blue Peter-esque style, said “here’s one I made earlier” and Hunky Dory marched back up the charts.

It may not be anywhere near as cohesive as Ziggy Stardust, but the songwriting on display here is simply extraordinary. As well as the aforementioned ‘Changes’ and ‘Life on Mars?’, the eccentric pop of ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’, the glam rock of ‘Queen Bitch’ and the folky ‘Song for Bob Dylan’ are splendidly crafted songs. Even the apparently throwaway ‘Kooks’ is delightfully perfect. At times there is the sneaking suspicion that Bowie hadn’t yet  decided on which direction he wanted to take, and the two more experimental cuts ‘Quicksand’ and ‘The Bewlay Brothers’ do begin to drag a little bit, but it’s charming and novel to hear a rock icon figure things out.

Ziggy Stardust may have been the real catalyst for one of rock and pop’s greatest careers, but Hunky Dory showed the world just how much talent had lay dormant, waiting for people to catch on.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Changes – 3:37

2.       Oh! You Pretty Things – 3:12

3.       Eight Line Poem – 2:55

4.       Life on Mars? – 3:53

5.       Kooks – 2:53

6.       Quicksand – 5:08

7.       Fill Your Heart – 3:07

8.       Andy Warhol – 3:56

9.       Song for Bob Dylan – 4:12

10.   Queen Bitch – 3:18

11.   The Bewlay Brothers – 5:22

Listen to ‘Life on Mars?’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ

8th November - Lou Reed's Transformer

Artist – Album: Lou Reed - Transformer

Released: 8^th November 1972

Sounds Like: Think outside the box

Pigeonholing – and I’m referring to the act of assigning something to a particular (usually restrictive) category, rather than the urban dictionary definition – is a sin that is difficult to resist in music. See someone in the street with black hair, black lips and black cloths, dark eyeliner and dark fingernail polish, and you’re likely to assume they listen to goth music (Wrong! They’re big fans of the Cheeky Girls).  Some artists are forever burdened with their earlier sounds: hence The Clash are still punks in the minds of some and The Charlatans (that’s The Charlatans UK if you’re from America) are forever dismissed as a poor man’s Stone Roses. And then there are those artists who are associated with a scene just because everyone else was doing it at the time – Radiohead aren’t Britpop, Melvins aren’t Grunge and Blink-182 were never Emo.

Similarly, Lou Reed may have dipped his toes into the pool of glam rock with Transformer, but he was no Marc Bolan. As typical of the time as ‘I’m So Free’ and ‘Vicious’ were, a fair portion of the tracks here (‘New York Telephone Conversation’ and ‘Goodnight Ladies’) seem to be performed by some sort of strange New York oompah band. Even the three best known tracks – ‘Perfect Day’, ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and ‘Satellite of Love’ – are hard to categorise. ‘Andy’s Chest’, meanwhile, was recorded by Reed’s old band The Velvet Underground three years previously, and as such has the imminently unclassifiable sound of the majority of their output.

At the end of the day, there’s no need to pigeonhole (that is, neither limiting labelling nor the urban dictionary way). All that you really need to know is that this is another great album from the great man.

Albumaday... rating: 8/10

1.       Vicious – 2:55

2.       Andy’s Chest – 3:17

3.       Perfect Day – 3:43

4.       Hangin’ Round – 3:39

5.       Walk on the Wild Side – 4:12

6.       Make Up – 2:58

7.       Satellite of Love – 3:40

8.       Wagon Wheel – 3:19

9.       New York Telephone Conversation – 1:31

10.   I’m So Free – 3:07

11.   Goodnight Ladies – 4:19

Listen to ‘Satellite of Love’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH2EgYq_NCY

Also released on the 8th November:
1971: Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

2nd September - Suede's Coming Up

Artist – Album: Suede – Coming Up

Released:  2^nd September 1996

Sounds Like: Bowie does Britpop

Some would have it that Suede are the group that kickstarted the Britpop fad, highly acclaimed pioneers that were barged out of the way by yobbish upstarts Oasis and Blur and left to pick up the scraps in terms of hit songs. The description fails on closer inspection on two counts: Suede were not quite the first of the Britpoppers – Morrissey had been making music like this for a decade (including his 1988 single ‘Suedehead’, the track from which Suede took their name) and the rockier elements of the earlier Madchester scene (including a somewhat Baggier Blur) were the real forerunners; and the group were certainly not the nearly men of pop – their first album became the fastest selling debut in history as it rocketed to the top of the charts, whilst their fourth album also surged to the top. Coming Up, their third effort, is the other of their three number one albums (second album Dog Man Star broke the sequence with its measly third place charting), and with it produced five top ten singles. They didn’t do too shabbily, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Coming Up’s array of hits is indicative of the direction the band took with this release. The group had parted ways with guitarist Bernard Butler, and frontman Brett Anderson made the decision to adopt a much more upbeat and accessible sound than the commercially tepid (but since declared masterpiece) Dog Man Star. The album is dominated by simple, anthemic choruses and rousing guitar solos, with Anderson prancing about in his Bowie/Bolan obsessed manner and half-celebrating, half-lampooning the excessive lifestyles of vacuous nineties celebrities.

‘Trash’, ‘Beautiful Ones’ and ‘Saturday Night’ are classics, but, to be honest, the one note tactic to the album – Anderson had announced that he wanted to write an album of “just ten hits” – does begin to grate a little. A change in dynamic, a pared down approach to a song or two just to give you time to breath, is sadly lacking.  It’s good, not great, and is perhaps the album to turn only once you’ve tired of their first two stonkers.

 Albumaday... rating: 7/10

    1.       Trash – 4:06

2.       Filmstar – 3:25

3.       Lazy – 3:19

4.       By the Sea – 4:15

5.       She – 3:38

6.       Beautiful Ones – 3:50

7.       Starcrazy – 3:33

8.       Picnic by the Motorway – 4:45

9.       The Chemistry Between Us – 7:04

10.   Saturday Night – 4:32

Listen to ‘Trash’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PdKGDMhau4

Also released on 2^nd September:

2003: The National – Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers

6th June - David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Artist – Album: David Bowie – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Released:  6^th June 1972

Sounds Like: Bowie’s in space

So it was here that the David Bowie story really kicked off. True the Thin White Duke had scored a big hit with Space Oddity three years earlier, but by 1972 Bowie (aka Major Tom) was seen as something of a one-hit wonder, with his third and fourth albums, the rocky The Man Who Sold the World and the sublime Hunky Dory, barely registering on the public’s radar. Here though everything changed.

Here, the man sometimes known as Aladdin Sane drastically reinvented himself, dying his hair strikingly red and donning dramatic sparkly make up and tight jump suits. He opted for the glitzy, pop rock sound most notably practiced by T-Rex, festooned it to a loose narrative about an iconic alien named Ziggy, and invited the world to go mad for it. Which they did. Which is hardly surprising, given the strength of the songs on display: ‘Five Years’, ‘Moonage Daydream’, ‘Starman’, ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and ‘Suffragette City’. As glam rock became a worldwide sensation and Ziggy became a global mega star, the public revisited previous albums and were treated to the magisterial wonder of the likes of Life on Mars?

In the years that followed, the artist formerly known as Dave Jay went from strength to strength, releasing a string of impressive, arty records. None, however, could compare to this in terms of both influence and, more importantly, good fun. If you listen to just one glam rock concept album centred on the end of the world and the fate of an extravagant and androgynous alien rock star which singlehandedly changed the face of popular music today, make it this one.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Five Years – 4:44

2.       Soul Love – 3:33

3.       Moonage Daydream – 4:35

4.       Starman – 4:13

5.       It Ain’t Easy – 3:00

6.       Lady Stardust – 3:20

7.       Star – 2:50

8.       Hang On to Yourself – 2:40

9.       Ziggy Stardust – 3:13

10.   Suffragette City – 3:25

11.   Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide – 3:00 

Listen to ‘Soul Love’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kx9o1idWrE

Also released on the 6^th June:

1967: Moby Grape – Moby Grape

Also released on the 6^th June:

1996: Belle & Sebastien – Tigermilk

Also released on the 6^th June:

2011: Battles – Gloss Drop