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Classic Rock DECEMBER 2021 - by Stephen Dalton

DAVID BOWIE: BRILLIANT ADVENTURE 1992-2001

Bowie goes back to the future in a decade full of knowing nostalgia and risky reinvention.

Dusting himself off after his mullet-haired late-'80s slump and unloved Tin Machine side project, David Bowie spent most of the '90 fighting to regain his high cultural standing as a god-like art-rock innovator. Looking backwards to move forwards, he reconnected with key figures from his imperial phase including Mick Ronson, Brian Eno and Nile Rodgers. He waxed nostalgic about Bromley and Berlin, but also embraced cutting- edge electronica and industrial noise, wisely resisting full surrender to the lucrative but deadening conservatism of Britpop.

Spanning 1992 to 2001, this latest addition to the ongoing flood of posthumous Bowie box sets is full of qualified gems and rare treasures, notably the first official release of the fabled 'lost' album Toy.

Black Tie, While Noise, Bowie's first solo album in six years, reunited him with Let's Dance producer Nile Rodgers and Ziggy-era guitar legend Mick Ronson. Informed by contemporary trip-hop and house music, the high-gloss production sounds airless and dated today, but the Marvin Gaye-quoting title track stands up better than expected, and the rousing, gospel-infused version of Morrissey's I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday is a deliciously camp improvement on the original. Behind its sexy sci-fi dance-pop sheen. Jump They Say pays elliptical tribute to Bowie's schizophrenic half-brother Terry Burns, who committed suicide in 1985. This solid comeback album scored Bowie a rare Number 1 just weeks before Ronson died of cancer.

Citing both Bromley and Berlin as inspiration, Bowie revisited his South London roots for The Buddha Of Suburbia, a partial soundtrack to the 1993 BBC drama series. Overlooked by critics but cherished by Bowiephiles, this autumnal collection is a little too heavy on anodyne funk-pop tastefulness. That said, the roaringly dramatic title track feels like a sequel to Absolute Beginners, and features winking quotes from both Space Oddity and All The Madmen. There is an eerie Eno-ish beauty to electro-jazz audioscapes The Mysteries and Ian Fish, UK Heir, while the shimmering synth-pop gallop Dead Against It is a genuine underrated classic.

For the first time since 1979, Bowie then reunited with Eno to make Outside, a neo-Brechtian cyber-goth concept album narrated by multiple characters. Channeling Trent Reznor with its snarly mesh of electronica with industrial guitars, this boldly experimental 1995 album was later talked up as an unsung avant-rock masterpiece in Diamond Dogs mode, not least by its creators. Alas the passing decades have not improved its overstuffed theatrical clutter and dearth of strong tunes. Even so, the gleaming electro-blues ballad Wishful Beginnings is a gorgeous slice of late-period Scott Walker pastiche, and I'm Deranged a slice of vintage Bowie melodrama.

The 1997 album Earthling, a more convincing mix of beats, loops, samples and shredding guitars, marked Bowie's fiftieth birthday with a bold detour into mutant drum'n'bass. Critics were dismissive, but vivid electro-punk tracks like Little Wonder, Battle For Britain (The Letter) and The Last Thing That You Do are classic Bowie blends of discordant art-rock noise with hook-heavy space-cockney melody.

Marking the end of his long collaboration with avant-metal guitarist Reeves Gabrels, Bowie's final album of the '90s was the soft-rock collection Hours, a pipe-and-slippers affair that felt disappointingly bland at the time. With hindsight the wistful ruminations of Thursday's Child, Seven and Something In The Air have real emotional bite and sumptuous acoustic depths. A minor work, but not without merit.

The main event in Brilliant Adventure is the first official release of Toy, on which Bowie reworks songs from his pre-fame mod-about-town period spanning 1965 to 1970. Initially intended for release in 2001, the project was shelved by EMI, which led to Bowie switching labels and writing new music instead. But most of these tracks later resurfaced as B-sides, compilation cuts and bootlegs. Originally skimpy exercises in jaunty music-hall beat-pop, Let Me Sleep Beside You and Silly Boy Blue lose some of their raw juvenile charm in these polished MOR makeovers. But lushly orchestrated remakes of Shadow Man, Conversation Piece and The London Boys gain extra emotional resonance as midlife ruminations on lost youth, while proto-Britpop belters Karma Man and Can't Help Thinking About Me still sound like pill-popping Carnaby Street catwalk struts. A worthwhile exercise in knowing nostalgia.

Already available but still a welcome inclusion here is Bowie's live BBC concert from June 2000, recorded around his Glastonbury headliner set, which features terrific versions of Wild Is The Wind, Ashes To Ashes, Cracked Actor and others.

ReCall 5, an uneven double album of alternative mixes and outlier tracks, throws up various jewels including the pounding disco-gallop Pet Shop Boys mix of Hello Spaceboy and Eno's gliding ambi-tronic reinvention of The Man Who Sold The World.

Among the handful of charity compilation tracks is a luminous orchestral cover of George and Ira Gershwin's A Foggy Day (In London Town) arranged by Angelo Badalamenti, and a sluggish trudge through The Who's Pictures Of Lily, which somehow manages to make teenage wanking sound like a dull chore.

Nothing on Brilliant Adventure touches the genius heights of Bowie's '70s peaks, but nothing is as lame as his worst '80s efforts either. A rich feast for connoisseurs, a rewarding research project for curious casual fans.