hours…

Occasionally I still check BowieNet, David Bowie’s official website. Over the many years since Reality, his last album, and in the light of his increasing doing-nothing (of which I can not fault him for, the man has done more than 10 of us non-superhumans put together), I’ve let my subscription lapse.

It’s a shame that I’ve had to do so, but honestly, the only thing it could do for me now is give me the chance to win some contests. I’m mildly interested in having a signed t-shirt he looked at once (not interested), but really. It’s 60 dollars spent better elsewhere.

Anyways, the point is that it’s “hours…”’s 10th birthday. The last album of Bowie’s 90s period, and as such, is often similarly derided as every other 90s album. I, of course, don’t really buy into it. I love all the 90s albums, with Buddha of Suburbia being one of my favorites (and an oft-forgotten gem), and 1. Outside and Earthling being some daring and exciting pieces of music. Bowie was truly making music for himself in those years, after the previous decade of playing to the masses. Nile Rodgers said of the recording sessions for Black Tie White Noise that Bowie was, much to Rodgers’ chagrin, uninterested in bettering their previous collaboration, Let’s Dance. While one could read that as laziness on Bowie’s part, the resulting decade’s output really shows it as independence, a willingness to make music that he would want to listen to himself.

But everyone says “hours…”, the final Bowie album of the 90s is boring, a misstep, an in-between piece of music. I will agree with the latter in this. It’s certainly an album that finds Bowie changing where he wants to go with his music. The daring collaborations with Reeves Gabrels that Outside and Earthling birthed are clearly of waning interest to him. Now, I doubt it was so clear a decision (”oh, Reeves, I just don’t want to be edgy anymore”). Certainly there is still much avant-noodling sprinkling this album, and of course, it’s history is also a little unique.

Most of the songs on hours… (from now on I’m dropping the ellipsis) started as songs that were written for the soundtrack of a video game, namely Omikron: The Nomad Soul, which I’ve never played or been able to, but it’s certainly an interesting concept for a game (inhabiting different characters dimensions, a melding of action/puzzle/fighting), and it also certainly fits with Bowie’s pro-technology stance of the 90s as well, what with his pioneering use of the internet.

I don’t know exactly why DB got involved with the game, but he makes appearances in it, and does the soundtrack. A few of the songs on Hours, “New Angels of Promise,” “The Dreamers,” come from it. As such, they’re a little more strangely composed than the other songs. They have the feeling of being written for aliens, which is fine, because they were (plus, writing songs for aliens is nothing new for the man).

The fact that these songs are alien though, makes them not mesh with the earlier songs on the album. These form a bit of a theme, which was oft-discussed at the time of its release. For the first time, everyone said, Bowie is looking back on his life! As

Anyways, it’s true. The earlier songs are imbued with a sense of loss, a loss yet to come, but still felt. It’s aging, through and through. It’s like DB’s running to catch up with the future is finally catching up with him, and the realization of this gives him pause.

Hours (at least the non-Omikron songs) is Bowie making an album not only just for himself again, or for the kids, or for the masses, or for experimentation’s sake. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with any of those options, but honestly, it must have been tiring to keep making albums ahead of a curve no one knew was coming yet. Like he says, “I’m dreaming my life away.” It seems like an apt phrase for Bowie’s 90s output (hell, for his entire output). Hours seems like one of the first times that Bowie was writing about himself, unfettered with character.

The thing about Hours is that it’s full up with a lot of great songs. Very nice songs, nicely written, nicely performed. While it seems like Bowie and his new band (the beginnings of the band he would continue to perform with for his next 2-3 albums) are trying to find their feet in this new Bowie-as-Bowie world, it’s fun to go on the ride with them. And Bowie’s lyrics, touching on age, can be moving, as is his delivery, stunning as usual. They aren’t as up close and personal as his next album Heathen’s are yet, the cards are still a little close to the chest.

In a way, that makes it a lot like R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant, where Michael Stipe’s vocals are finally turned up in the mix, but his lyrics are still in the fog. It’s an interesting midsection, a slice of almost-there. More appropriately as a comparison, even, would be to Bowie’s own Lodger, the other misunderstood runt of Bowie’s mega-litter. Lodger was also caught in both the middle and the end of a phase of his career. He had stretched the compositional anti-formulas of Low and “Heroes” too thin over a batch of songs that might have been better served cut as straight pop-songs.

But still, despite this, take a fully-realized pop song like Thursday’s Child, with it’s touching singalong chorus, or the growing-up feel of Seven, or the adult-contempo-yet-no-less-touching pop of Survive. They’re all golden! Even the experiment of the fan-written lyrics in What’s Really Happening isn’t a total dud. It’s a cybersong, through and through. There’s nothing as easily-digestible or as easily made into an anthem as “Rebel, Rebel,” but the subject matter on Hours is more adult, more difficult (or just inappropriate) to really throw your arms in the air for.

Yet still, despite the chilling cover of 1999 Bowie holding the exhausted (or dead?) 1997 Bowie in his arms, it’s really Heathen, the next album, that is the true beginning of the next phase of Bowie’s music, where his goals, his emotions, his latter-period vision, truly came in to focus. But Hours remains as a completely enjoyable and exciting album, one that makes little demands of its listeners. Such a thing is never a bad thing in music. I’m a staunch believer in “harmless without being pointless.” Sometimes, a melody is enough.

It’s just still and always (until it isn’t) a shame we haven’t heard anything from him since 2003’s (!!!) Reality.

Hours… 10 years old.

Thursday’s Child:

Survive:

Something In The Air from Omikron: