WARNER MUSIC David Bowie - Scary Monsters ( And Super Creeps )

1980 ( 2017 Remastered Edition )

David Bowie,  Carlos Alomar,  Chuck Hammer,  Pete Townshend,  Robert Fripp,  George Murray,  Toni Visconti

[ Rolling Stone ]: Scary Monsters clarifies the David Bowie/Brian Eno Low-“Heroes”-Lodger experiments. They were reeducational projects: deliberate, short-term consolidations of the singer’s skills and audience. While the Devos of this world forged his dramas into dogma, lampooning and literalizing his heritage, Bowie toiled in the training camp of the musical avant-garde, acquiring yet another synthetic vocabulary and releasing miniaturistic exercises that, stripped of their pretensions, turned out to be some of his finest work.

On Scary Monsters, he comes out fighting. Fusing the sheet-metal textures of the Eno trilogy into something darker and more dense, Bowie focuses his attention on a world he helped create. Lodger, with its sardonic gambol through “the hinterland,” was the final serving — and sendup — of the old pose of evasive escapism. Scary Monsters presents David Bowie riveted to life’s passing parade: streamlined moderns, trendies and sycophants in 360 degrees of stark, scarifying Panavision. With its nervous voyeurism, Scary Monsters is more like Aladdin Sane (probably Bowie’s best record) than anything else. But because the bleakness that Bowie now witnesses is partially of his own devising, it gives the new LP a heavy, stricken pall. If there’s condescension in the artist’s stance (Prometheus aghast at what mortals have made of his gift?), there’s also genuine concern. Bowie has the air of a superhero who’s shrugged off his powers and thus volunteered himself to a reality from which he can’t quick-change away.

[ Ultimate Classic Rock ]: No mainstream artist enjoyed a more eclectic and exciting rock 'n' roll career throughout the '70s than David Bowie. And as the chameleon-like singer delivered Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), on Sept. 12, 1980, it seemed possible that the same would be true of Bowie's next decade.
After completing his famed Berlin Trilogy of Low, 'Heroes' and Lodger, Bowie decided that his 14th studio album would be recorded at New York City's Power Station, again with help from longtime producer Tony Visconti – but without Brian Eno. That meant Eno's penchant for spontaneous songwriting and recording techniques were replaced by a more traditional, highly organized process focused more on delivering big hits than earning more critical plaudits for artistry.
In keeping, the advance single "Ashes to Ashes" – which resurrected his popular Major Tom character from "Space Oddity" – went to No. 1 in the U.K., while performing strongly in numerous countries. (In the U.S., the song had an entirely different fate, just missing the Billboard Hot 100 and peaking at No. 101.) "Fashion," a direct descendant from Station to Station's "Golden Years," following in short order, pushing Scary Monsters to the top the charts in the U.K.; Bowie reached No. 12 in America.
Elsewhere, however, many of the songs on Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) were as challenging and unconventional as critics and discerning Bowie-philes could have asked for. The opening tune, "It's No Game," married a plodding dirge to Bowie's intentionally strangled vocals and a female narration of the lyrics in Japanese. "Up the Hill Backwards" commented on the singer's recent divorce over a lurching, 7/4 beat, and then the title track arose from a sinister Robert Fripp guitar figure, which was indicative of its subject's descent into madness – all before the aforementioned singles made their entrances.