[Ed. Note: In light of David Bowie's passing, Pitchfork commissioned reviews of several of his classic albums.]
The thing to know about David Bowie's 1979 album Lodger is that there really isn't anything special to know: No creation myth, no alter ego, no 10-minute-long song-suites or spooky instrumentals or pretentious backstories about George Orwell and "the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock." Actually, Lodger might be the first David Bowie album marketed as nothing more than an album of recorded music by David Bowie. "I would like to do something rivetingly new and, uh, earth shattering," he said in a radio interview a few days before the album's release. "Every Saturday I want to do that!" Then, self-mockery: "Let's do something earth shattering. No, let's put the telly on*.*" A few minutes later, his digression on the metaphorical impacts of science fiction on personal identity is interrupted by a dog. Like, a canine, whimpering aloud while Bowie unburdens himself about inner space. "I know it's a bore, darling," he says to the dog, and everyone, including David Bowie, laughs.
The dog had a point: Seriousness really can be boring after awhile, which might've occurred to Bowie after the cold white peaks of 1977's Low. Sensing that high art might be losing its flavor, he went on a long, generous tour called Isolar II during which he revived the entirety of 1972's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, a gesture that in the context of his restlessly radical early-'70s career would've been like staging a Vegas revue. "He's remembering that bone shot in 2001," Bowie says of the dog during the radio interview. "What a waste of a bone!" A showman by birth and narcissist by trade, Bowie could've easily been talking about himself.
Lodger has 10 songs, all of which are three to four minutes long. One is a great Talking Heads impression called "D.J." and another is basically a Brian Eno song with vocals by David Bowie instead of Brian Eno ("Red Sails"). The music is punky and dramatic and a little odd, with detours into reggae and near-Eastern tonalities ("Yassassin") and nebulously exotic "world" sounds ("African Night Flight"), all filtered through the ears of a British guy with plenty of money and the imperial leeway to appropriate whatever he felt like. To this day, no musician has better mastered the hermetic intensity of cocaine, a drug that makes you want to have long conversations with everyone you've ever met without leaving your room.