David Bowie - hours...

Hours felt like a kind of back to basics, return to form for David Bowie on its release in 1999.  Gone were the industrial/jungle styling of 1.Outside and Earthling.  In their place were melodic... even mature 'proper songs'.  Guitars that you could hear.  At the time it almost felt like a grown up Hunky Dory!

So now?  Thursday's Child feels very 'adult-oriented', or even 'radio-friendly', with its washes of keyboards and cooing female backing vocals.  Something in the Air, is deceptive, the kind of complex yet catchy song only Bowie could pull off.  Acoustic guitars on Survive and especially Seven give these songs considerable warmth.  The latter in particular sounds like an instant classic 

Faster material like What's Really Happening and The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell fare less well.  They are by no means bad songs, just less resonant than the rest of the album, ultimately a little forgettable.  Brilliant Adventure even channels the second side of his Eno collaboration Low. 

There's very little edge here, the vaguely Nine Inch Nails pulsing at the start of final track The Dreamers wouldn't unsettle anyone.  But it's definitely an underrated album, there's little grit on it and plenty of polish.  But also some very listenable songs.

Album Review: The Chameleons - Script of the Bridge

The Chameleons were an eighties post-punk style band who I must admit I didn't discover till the mid noughties.  Script of the Bridge is their debut album and it must have been on high rotation with Interpol and The Horrors.  It has to be said that opener Don't Fall is a bit weak, a monolithic slab of whiny misery.  After this the album picks up considerably.  Here Today lurches back and forth agreeably but the following two tracks are two of the strongest.  Monkeyland is all creeping tension, building up to a sweeping chorus where singer Mark Burgess belts out "it's just a trick of the light".  Keyboards introduce Second Skin which has a soaring melody before Dave Fielding and Reg Smithies' spidery guitar lines fade into nothingness in the coda.

The album doesn't quite sustain such peaks but remains interesting nonetheless: Up The Down Escalator bears all the hallmarks of early U2 EXCEPT Bono, while the shimmering Thursday's Child evokes early Cure.  The most Joy Division-like moment here is the insistent A Person Isn't Safe Anywhere These Days,,some of the drum fills are reminiscent of that band's Atmosphere.  But this album stands apart from these comparisons.  It's a perfectly formed early eighties album to file alongside Closer and Faith.