The songwriting muse returned with “Earthling,” and shines through the of-the-moment industrial and drum n’ bass sounds. While the ensuing album, “Outside,” was far too high on concept and low on melody, it did bring him back into an adventurous place (although “Thru’ These Architects Eyes” is a thinly veiled rewrite of Jane’s Addiction’s “Obvious”). His next act, where the man made the most welcome musical move longtime fans could have hoped for: reuniting with Brian Eno, with whom he made some of his most visionary work during the late 1970s.
It actually belongs more to the previous era than Bowie’s ’90s, which really begin with… He reunited with that album’s producer, Chic maestro Nile Rodgers, but didn’t approach its success and it’s not hard to see why: It sounds badly dated, with lots of big drum sounds and little songwriting inspiration. This set begins with 1992’s “Black Tie White Noise,” Bowie’s last stab at another “Let’s Dance”-sized hit.
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And although many of his moves in the period covered here seemed just as cynical at the time - a series of seemingly random image changes and musical bandwagon-jumping onto to whatever musical trend was hot at the time, from industrial rock to drum n’ bass - the songs on these albums have aged much better than it seemed they would at the time.
It’s likely that even Bowie would agree that he spent the latter half of the ‘80s flailing in search of inspiration, bounding from the garish pop excess of “Never Let Me Down” to his bizarre, Pixies-inspired take on an indie-rock band, the much-lambasted Tin Machine (whose albums his estate seems to have left for a later retrospective). For the most part, David Bowie’s career can be divided into eras by decade - the ‘60s, when he tried almost anything to make it (Mod-pop, Buddhism, folksinging) and mostly failed the ‘70s, when he released some of the most exciting and innovative albums in music history the ‘80s, when he got a taste of platinum success with “Let’s Dance” and lost his muse and the period encapsulated in the latest career-spanning boxed set, “Brilliant Adventure: 1992-2001” - when he got at least some of it back.
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