The David Bowie - Starman Album Of The Week! Lodger (1979) Bowie collaborated with British pop artist Derek Boshier on the cover design. The original gatefold album sleeve featured a full-length shot of Bowie as an accident victim, heavily made up with an apparently broken nose. For effect, the image was deliberately of low resolution, taken with a Polaroid SX-70 type camera. The inside of the gatefold included pictures of Che Guevaras corpse, Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ, and Bowie being readied for the cover photo. These images were not reproduced in the Rykodisc CD reissue in 1991. Lodger received relatively poor reviews on its original release, Rolling Stone calling it one of his weakest... scattered, a footnote to Heroes, an act of marking time, and Melody Maker finding it slightly faceless. In Smash Hits the album was described as sounding like a ragbag of rejects from previous styles with only occasional flashes of genius. It was also criticised for having a thinner, muddier mix than Bowies previous albums. Lodger peaked at No. 4 in the UK charts and No. 20 in the US at a time when the artist was being out-Bowied commercially by his new wave children such as Gary Numan. Soon after its release, Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray predicted that Lodger would have to grow in potency over a few years, but eventually it will be accepted as one of Bowies most complex and rewarding projects. While biographer Christopher Sandford calls it a slick, calculatedly disposable record,[6] author David Buckley contends that its stature grows with each passing year, and Nicholas Pegg sums up, undervalued and obscure practically from the moment of its release, its critical re-evaluation is long overdue. Electronica/techno artist Moby would later state that the only reason he got his first job (as a golf caddy) was so that he could afford to buy Lodger, which had just come out. Built to Spill would reference the album in their song Distopian Dream Girl taken from their 1994 album Theres Nothing Wrong With Love.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 02:56:51 +0000