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| Rollingstone |
 Released on the same day as Sgt. Pepper, David Bowie's 1967 debut was an odd start for the man who'd soon turn his strangeness into stardom. He mixes the English music hall of the Beatles' "Penny Lane" with the psychedelic whimsy of early Pink Floyd, but even in this cabaret setting, Bowie shows his knack for mixing singalong tunes with offbeat subject matter: The catchiest song, "She's Got Medals," celebrates a cross-dressing lesbian soldier. Singles, stereo and mono mixes, and Bowie's first BBC radio session complete this early portrait of pop's ultimate shape-shifter....full text |
| Guardian |
| No artist's musical past has come back to haunt them quite like David Bowie's. There he was in 1973, the world's most cutting-edge pop star: half the country certain he's rock's saviour, the other half terrified, seemingly convinced he actually is some kind of gay alien sex demagogue on Earth to corrupt youth. He has achieved this via stunning records and provocations: telling the press he's homosexual, pretending to fellate his guitarist on stage, suddenly announcing his retirement. It has all been brilliantly planned and executed, which makes the reappearance of music he made years before devising Ziggy Stardust all the more agonising. Worse, the song his old label has rereleased and seen rise to No 6 in the charts is The Laughing Gnome, a 1967 novelty that has also been covered by crooner Ronnie Hilton. The Laughing Gnome fitted perfectly with Hilton's oeuvre – his big hit being that one about a mouse living in a windmill in old Amsterdam – which obviously makes it profoundly unsuitable material for a terrifying gay alien sex demagogue to be caught singing in public. Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 David Bowie David Bowie Decca - Pop 2010 Perhaps understandably, Bowie long evinced a strained relationship with his 60s work, first ignoring it, then rerecording some of it in 2002, for the unreleased album Toy. Its reputation was further damaged by his former manager Kenneth Pitt's book The Pitt Report, notable both for a diverting interlude in which Bowie inadvertently sees Pitt's penis and pretends to measure it while bellowing "ye gods!" and its demented premise that Bowie's 60s work was unequivocally the artistic highlight of his career. The other bit – when he became the most important artist since the Beatles and somehow made four of the greatest albums ever while so maddened by cocaine he allegedly stored his own urine in the fridge in case a wizard stole it – was merely the unasked-for, complimentary After Eight following the creative smorgasbord that was When I'm Five and Ching-a-Ling. It's so insanely wrong-headed that it reflects badly on the music; anything requiring that much special pleading must be rubbish....full text |
| Bbc |
| No matter how many substandard albums David Bowie has released in the latter part of his career, his eponymous 1967 debut album has always been perceived as the slightest long-player in his catalogue. For some, then, this deluxe version of David Bowie – expanded to two CDs, with lengthy booklet notes – will be almost laughably inappropriate. As well as legendary lost song London Bye Ta-Ta and contemporaneous non-album Bowie material like the swirling Let Me Sleep Beside You and novelty song The Laughing Gnome, disc two virtually gives us the album we’ve heard twice over (stereo and – first time on CD – mono) on disc one in a different permutation: single and radio session versions and previously unreleased mixes. All very comprehensive, but aesthetically too much even if the parent album was the greatest ever made. David Bowie shows talent, but one very much unrefined. Within a musical style that is baroque pop crossed with northern brass band crossed with music hall, parping horns and brisk drums decorate pretty but largely unmemorable melodies. The lyrics are above average – thoughtful character studies – but hardly deep, sort of toytown Eleanor Rigbys. Highlights are the orchestrated, melancholy Sell Me a Coat, Rubber Band – an old-time musician's misty memories set to a marching beat – and There Is a Happy Land, a shimmering musical adaptation of Keith Waterhouse’s novel of childhood. Everything is agreeable but nothing truly classic and the relentless whimsy gets tiresome....full text |
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