Record Reviews, the Bridge reviews the best and worst of the year's new releases.
David Bowie Ziggy Stardust
From start to finish this is an LP of dazzling intensity and mad design. Bowie is achieving with words the sort of effect which groups like Pink Floyd are attempting with instruments and volume. At times one is almost mesmerizes by the tumble of images and the sheer force of Bowie's performance. A stunning work of genius. Not your everyday sort of album, but an album for every day – at least until the End.
The Rolling Stones; Exile on Main Street
There are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse, there are songs that'll become your favorites and others you'll probably lift the needle for when their time is due. But in the end, Exile on Main Street spends its four sides shading the same song in as many variations as there are Rolling Stone readymades to fill them, and if on the one hand they prove the group's eternal constancy and appeal, it's on the other that you can leave the album and still feel vaguely unsatisfied, not quite brought to the peaks that this band of bands has always held out as a special prize in the past.
The Stones have never set themselves in the forefront of any musical revolution, instead preferring to take what's already been laid down and then gear it to its highest most slashing level. Along this road they've displayed a succession of sneeringly believable poses, in a tradition so grand that in lesser hands they could have become predictable, coupled with an acute sense of social perception and the kind of dynamism that often made everything else seem beside the point.
Elton John: Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player (DJM)
WELL, WHADAYA know – another fine Elton John album. Despite sneers, calumny and general foulness, the former Reg just keeps on writin', playin', singin' and gettin' in on for the people. Don't Shoot Me... is one nice piece of black plastic.
Having left The Velvet Underground two years previously, his career was in a state of limbo, with a self-titled solo debut hardly setting the world alight and his overall future in the music business looking uncertain. Salvation, however, was at hand in the form of British innovator David Bowie, who along with Mick Ronson handled production details and cited The Velvets among his primary influences. Although not credited with any of the tracks, Bowie's creative influence here is clear, as it provided much needed direction to Reed's ambitions, with predictably splendid results. Reed's voice and crunchy guitar are still the overriding themes of the record, but there's an obvious glam influence in tracks like 'Perfect Day' which could only have been brought to the table by Bowie, and has the curious effect of enhancing one of the least glamorous musicians of the age.