The GB Album Club 012 - 1. Outside by David Bowie

All the young duders! Welcome to the 12th installment of the Unofficial Giant Bomb Album Club! Last week, genres were blended, expectations were defied, and those of us who aren't that into anime were left thoroughly confused by much of the discussions in our Discord with Clarity by PassCode! This week, we meet the man who fell to Earth. We serve The Thin White Duke. We do too much coke in LA and move to Berlin for a while. That's right, our album is 1. Outside (The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper Cycle) by David Bowie! This album was selected by @redwing42, and you can listen below:

Spotify

Apple Music

Youtube

Here at the Unofficial Giant Bomb Album Club, we pick an album at random from our pool and we chat about it. To participate, simply listen to the album and comment with your thoughts below! Or join our Discord and talk about it there, where you'll also need to be when we get around to picking albums again! (We're not taking any new submissions, what with this cycle already taking what feels like a billion years.) And hey, we got ourselves a channel there just for posting good songs! @facelessvixen posted this Patti Austin song in there that fucking rips. It's a good time in there.

As a huge Bowie fan. I'm very curious to hear what non-diehard fans think about this one. Personally, it is a Top 5 Bowie album, but there is quite a bit going on here that really only lives on this album. One of my great (musical) regrets is that I didn't go see the '95 Bowie/NIN tour when I maybe had the opportunity to do so. I'm still trying to find a good bootleg of that tour.

This is my first 90s Bowie album. And really, this is my first not hugely famous Bowie album as well, relatively speaking of course. My understanding is that there are plenty of people who like this album a lot, but I'm talking more about a certain kind of prestige. This is my first "hidden gem" so to speak, even though it's not really hidden.

And honestly, I'm struggling to think of what to say.

On one hand, it's a completely overwhelming experience. It's long, it has a pretty detailed narrative you have to listen to closely to pick up on, and as far as composition and the other musical elements, it's arguably the densest Bowie album I've listened to so far. Simply put, it asks too much of you. At least on the first listen, and probably a few more listens after that.

On the other hand, the moments that shine really shine. There are moments when the album makes it easy to give yourself over to it because it takes those three elements and makes them sing. Sure, it's long. But sometimes grandiosity is the point, and it feeds into the ambition of not only the story, but the experimental production as well. Turns out this David Bowie guy is pretty fuckin' great at making music!

But then a sense of frustration seeps in for me. "Did it really have to be that long?" "Is the narrative told effectively?" "Sure, some of the music sounds fantastic, but other parts sound dated in a bad way, and some of it aesthetically isn't working for me." Granted, there's only so much you can do about the latter, but the former two eat away at me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I really like this album and I'm simultaneously frustrated by it because it could've been executed better. Not only that, but it's so close to where it should be that you can practically hear it, and that makes it worse. However, the stuff that works is so potent that it almostdoesn't matter.

That being said, I imagine my relationship with this album will only grow strong as a listen to it again. And I will listen to it again because this album basically demands that you do so.

Favorite Songs: "The Motel," "I Have Not Been to Oxford Town," "We Prick You"

I think the second star of this album is Mike Garson, the piano player (Bowie's vocals are superb, as usual). He may be a weird space wizard, but his unhinged jazz lines really tie the songs together and give everything a slight sense of uneasiness or discordance that fits the theme very well. Apparently, he won't play synths, though. Only piano. They may have used a guitar synth treatment at times that they also used on the next album, Earthling, though I haven't confirmed that.

@redwing42: So I listened to a snippet of a song or two the day before I listened to the whole album, and I don't remember what song led me to believe this, but I thought that it was going to be another 90s X BIG ARTIST EMBRACES NEW AGE SOUND. In other words, the kind of thing Sting was doing in that mid-late 90s and stuff like that. Then I actually listened to the album and the pianos are what deaded those fears.

So I agree with you in a snarky sarcastic way, but also genuinely. I haven't spent a lot of time around that era of industrial music, and the idea of incorporating this kind of free form jazz into some of the songs struck me as not just novel, but incredibly effective. It does add this layer that would have a tangible impact were you to go through and remove them.

Again, David Bowie. He's got it.

I'm not sure how I feel about this album. I often find that I like the idea of David Bowie more than the real thing and this album reinforces that belief. Bowie's vocals are great and the overall experimental feel of many of the songs feel fresh and foreign despite the album being almost 30 years old. And yet, I didn't love the whole of any of the songs. I loved a riff here and a line there, but the sum wasn't as compelling as the parts.

On the upside, listening to this album led to me watching Labyrinth. So I'm glad I gave Outside a try.

Heart's Filthy Lesson is secretly one of my Bowie favorite songs.

Labyrinth is always a good option. Bowie's soundtrack work in the 80's was arguably better than his studio albums.

@mach_go_go_go: Good video!

Not the best metric, but it's the third highest streamed song on the album on Spotify, and if I'm not mistaken, it was the first single. Point being that I'm sure there's someone who agrees with you.

Sure seems like this album and a lot of the stuff on it are a lot of people's sleeper Bowie favorites.

@redwing42: not sure if I’d put it in my top 5 Bowie albums, but it’s #2 on my list of Albums That Came After Scary Monsters. (#1 is Heathen.)

Heathen is also great, particularly the title track and Sunday. It is right behind Outside for me in your specific category, and certainly Top 10 overall for me. It is really hard to put anything above his mid to late 70s run. In chronological order, I've got Diamond Dogs, Station to Station, Low, and Scary Monsters in my top 5 along with Outside. Albums subject to my current mood, of course, but these are pretty consistent for me.

I'm 11 tracks in and I'm liking this. The Segues are bloody awful but Heart's Filthy Lesson and The Voyeur of Utter Destruction hit really well. At times you can really hear why David Cage wanted him in on Omicron. Weird but there's enough craft in it to stop it completely collapsing into shit.

I gotta keep this short since I'm a little behind schedule on my paintings:

This is my first Bowie album despite knowing about him for decades thanks to various pop culture references including That 70''s Show, Zoolander, and Metal Gear Solid 5's licensed soundtrack. I liked what I was listening to, mainly the industrial tracks such as Heart's Filthy Lesson, but the weirder interludes have some charm as well. But, it is a little difficult for me to take it all in. It's less of an album for causal listening, and more of an overall experience that takes time to fully absorb without any distractions, like a stage play; which is something that I very much appreciate given how I've been going on and on about albums that need more than a weekend or even a week in order to give them their proper dues. So, at roughly two laps of the album, it seems like a good proper into to Bowie.

I enjoyed listening to this a lot, but I'm not sure if I can see myself coming back to it all that often. It's not really a casual listen and a lot of the individual tracks are bit too dreamy to be the sort of thing that I'd typically listen to on their own. It's more the sort of thing that I might throw on occasionally while I just lay on the couch and go full zen mode.

Long story short, taken as a complete album, I think this is great and was well worth the time to fully take it in.