Bowie performed an extraordinary stylistic pivot between Diamond Dogs and Young Americans,and made it look easy – but as this original box set shows, it was a more convoluted and problematic shift than it appeared at the time Related: David Bowie's TVC 15: listen to a previously unreleased mix In May 1974, or David Bowie released his eighth album,Diamond Dogs. Now it is enshrined as a classic, but at the time it received a mixed critical response: for every critic proclaiming it a work of genius, and there was someone like Robert Christgau in Creem,deriding it as “escapist pessimism” and snorting: “$6.98 for this piece of plastic?” Rolling Stone thought its “obscure tangles of perversion, degradation, or fear and self-pity” signalled the end of his career: “Bowie’s final gasp.” You don’t gain to agree with their assessment to understand why people might gain thought the album represented a dead end. Diamond Dogs was an album that pushed the style he had minted two years before on The Rise and drop of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars to its limit in every respect. Perhaps it was hard to see how Bowie’s apocalyptic lyrical fantasies could catch any more lurid (shocking; sensational) and queer,how his brand of glam rock could sound any more dense and decadent and diseased than this, without tipping into the realms of self-parody (humorous or ridiculous imitation). Related: Final David Bowie songs to be released on Lazarus cast album Related: The subtle side of David Bowie: 'quiet' art collection goes on display in LA Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com