It’s easy to dismiss this as Bowie’s juvenilia, which of course it is, but there’s a lot more to it than dodgy mock-cockney Anthony Newley impressions and vaguely psychedelic music hall musings. This album is a fascinating insight into Bowie’s early influences: late-60s psychedelia, in particular the English Canterbury scene and Syd Barrett; the rapier wit and social commentary of ‘comedy’ songwriters such as Noel Coward and Jake Thackray; as well as a possibly unhealthy fascination with science fiction dystopias. We Are Hungry Men, for example, is a direct precursor to some of Bowie’s Nietzschean concerns on The Man Who Sold The World, and wouldn’t have been out of place (at least, lyrically) on Diamond Dogs. What I find most interesting about this ‘juvenilia’ is that most of these early influences didn’t leave Bowie. He always retained a strong sense of the surreal and absurd (the grim social realism of the 70s overtaking the 60s happy hippy outlook); always had a wicked sense of humour and an interest in the dark arts of cabaret (e.g Bertolt Brecht’s Baal, covering Scott Walker’s covers of Jacques Brel); something of an obsession with other worlds (space, aliens) and an acute sense of the dramatic. This album might sound like a bit of fun to the casual listener, but there’s a lot more than meets the ears here if you pay attention and spot the connections across his later catalogue. FOR FULL REVIEW & PLAYLIST CLICK LINK IN BIO @davidbowie #davidbowie #deramrecords #thelaughinggnome #debutalbum #nowlistening #nowplaying #recordcollection #randomrecordreview https://www.instagram.com/p/CM6dmvxsj8A/?igshid=yt0uy0z1sb4v
