With the recent release of the David Bowie Limited Edition Box Set CD, it seems like a good time to take stock of what I refer to, perhaps a bit presumptuously, as ‘late-period’ David Bowie. The 5 albums contained in the box - Outside, Earthling, Hours…, Heathen, and Reality, were released between 1995 and 2003, falling into periods that Wikipedia term Bowie’s “Electronica” and “Neo-Classical” phases. Considering that it has been 5 years since has last release, and that Bowie recently turned 61 and has been taking the last few years easy after a minor heart attack, it feels safe to call these releases bookends to his creative output, at least in the rock realm. I also sincerely hope that we never have to endure watching him sing “Changes” on some greatest-hits farewell tour at the age of 70, which brings me to the main point of all this which is that Bowie never really played that game.

I will never forget my first Bowie concert, during the Outside tour, which was a co-headlining tour with Nine Inch Nails. The show was at Meadowlands in New Jersey, and took place about a week before Outside was actually released. NIN and Bowie were trading the headlining spot night after night and I was fortunate enough to see a night where Bowie played second. It was pretty obvious that there was a strong NIN contingent there, because easily a third to half of the crowd left after NIN’s set. Too bad for them. Those who were there for Bowie and expecting a run-through of his greatest hits were in for a disappointing surprise, because he proceeded to play the as-of-yet unreleased 70 minute long Outside album from front to back, pulling out “Under Pressure” and a couple of other hits only at the encore. While nearly all aging rockers of Bowie’s generation were either retired, or, with the exception of Neil Young and maybe a couple of other artists, out rehashing their glory years summer after summer, here Bowie was 28-odd years into his career, pushing the envelope yet again on record and onstage.

Outside is a dense, challenging work, and I posit that it is easily among his best, alongside Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane. Of his entire catalog, Aladdin Sane is probably the most akin to Outside, with Mike Garson’s atonal piano wanderings splattered across the sonic palettes of both albums like a drunk Art Tatum reading a Bartok score backwards. Outside is also far darker, and in that respect closer to the trilogy of albums he did in the late 70s with Brian Eno, or Scary Monsters, which followed. Is there filler material on Outside? Sure, not least of all the segues that link the songs that are part of the storyline, itself a thread on which the songs hang loosely as far as I can tell. But, what Bowie album doesn’t have a few misses?

Earthling, perhaps named to somehow subliminally cause association with the only other album in his entire catalog that rocks as hard - The Man Who Sold The World, while not as dark or complex as Outside, still showed Bowie exploring and pushing boundaries. The electronic element is pushed even further on this record, and quite a few of the songs have jungle-style drum tracks, further evidence that Bowie has always kept up with the latest fashions, both in clothes and in music. While he could have been out playing “Changes” for the 4,317th time, he was crafting songs like “I’m Afraid of Americans”, which in retrospect sounds like it could have been penned post-9/11, but instead was recorded a good 5 years previous:

“Johnny wants a brain
Johnny wants to suck on a Coke
Johnny wants a woman
Johnny wants to think of a joke…Johnny’s an American…

I’m afraid of Americans
I’m afraid of the world
I’m afraid I can’t help it..

God is an American
God is an American” - David Bowie

Am I saying that these lyrics are high art? No. It’s certainly a far cry from a Dylan, or a Cohen, but not bad at all for an aging glam rocker who has more to lose than gain by such sentiments. And check out how hard it rocks:



If you need further proof of how Bowie not only never lost his “cool”, but even upped the ante in his later years, compare this slightly cringe-worthy video and recorded version of a song about religion, “Loving The Alien”, with a recent live version:





I’ve thought about this long and hard, and with the exception of Neil Young, as I mentioned earlier, I’m hard-pressed to think of too many other “mainstream” music artists still exploring and trying new things into their golden years. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone, so I’d love to hear input on this. While I don’t own Hours…, Heathen and Reality are albums that fall, somewhat antithetical to this post, into Bowie’s neo-classical period, which saw a return to focusing on strong pop songs, and some wonderful, choice covers by artists like The Pixies, George Harrison, and Modern Lovers. They seemed to be a bit of a step back, another reassessment, and if nothing else a chance to go out and reinvent some older songs and show people that aging artists aren’t required to simply re-hash their hits year after year on the road.

If you are curious at all about what Bowie has been up to since the last time you realistically most likely heard from him, in the 80s, do yourself a favor and AT LEAST pick up Outside.

If you are a fan of the great alt-country band, The Jayhawks, then Gary Louris needs no introduction. He was an original member of the band, which formed in 1985 and has been on hiatus since 2006 after releasing 7 studio albums. I am not exactly a connoisseur of all things alt-country, but I daresay that The Jayhawks, along with Uncle Tupelo and a handful of others, were one of the original bands in a movement that made it OK again for a rock band to display their country roots. This is why it was so disconcerting when The Jayhawks, carrying on through the 90s after the departure in ‘95 of one of their two main songwriters, Mark Olson, released Smile in 2000. I nearly lost faith, so over-produced, trite and sappy was the result. 2003’s Rainy Day Music was mostly a return to form, much more akin to their classic album Tomorrow The Green Grass, than the far more rocking Sound of Lies, but it still felt like some steam was missing. All of the right ingredients were there in the songs, but it felt overcooked and even a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Last night, as I was telling a friend, who I happen to know is a fan of The Jayhawks, about the new Gary Louris disc, he asked me if it was as good as Tomorrow The Green Grass. For better or worse, this is the bar against which all things Jayhawks-related are measured. I am happy to report that my answer is “yes” and “no”. What do I mean by this? Well, first of all I happen to believe that it’s a loaded question. You can’t expect an artist to go back and match their earlier work. People change, people grow. The Jayhawks’ early albums came out after a decade of overblown everything, and thus felt like a huge breath of fresh air. This same air has again grown stale. Vagabonds feels like a creative rebirth.

“True Blue” is the opening track, and is probably the most obvious choice for a single for the album. Then again, this might be a subconscious trick, as “Blue” was the title of the big single from Tomorrow The Green Grass. On the chorus, Louris repeats “strip it down to what you can believe in, base it all on what is right and true blue”, followed by “today is the day my branches bear their fruit and all my labor will be rewarded. when i awake, it’s like starting over”. It’s as if he is clearing the air by restating an old mantra, and therein reminding himself of his responsibilities to himself as an artist. And I have to admit, by the end of the song, I am sold and reminded why I fell in love with his songwriting to begin with.

Vagabonds was produced by Chris Robinson, lead singer of The Black Crowes. While the effect on the music is subtle, there are definitely some subtleties that you could easily credit Robinson with - not least of all the fuzzed out slide guitar and gospel vocals on “Omaha Nights”, the call and response and hand claps at the end of “To Die A Happy Man”, and the stoner rock midsection and CSNY-influenced chorus of “I Wanna Get High”. The production ranges from elaborate (in a very warm, organic way that is), like on “I Wanna Get High”, to sparse - as evidenced on the acoustic guitar, cymbal swell, and piano-tinkling of “Meandering” where Louris states, perhaps not coincidentally “the more we polish up our silver, the less it seems to shine”. And yes, there’s pedal steel. “She Only Calls Me On Sundays” is probably the most obviously country offering of the batch, although Robinson manages to sneak the gospel singers in on this one too, to gorgeous effect.

4 out of 5. Highly recommended.

I also suggest that, along with Vagabonds, you pick up Mark Olson’s latest solo album, Salvation Blues, and either acquaint yourself with The Jayhawks, or revisit these old friends and see what good things they have been up to since you last checked in.

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Gary Louris is currently on tour and will be at The State Theatre in Falls Church, VA on Thursday, April 3.

Mark Olson is on tour also, and lucky for us here in Charlottesville, will be at Gravity Lounge on Tuesday, May 6. See you there!