LODGER
| David Bowie
LODGER
Lodger is the 13th studio album by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. It was originally released in May 1979 by RCA Records. The last of the Berlin Trilogy, it was recorded in Switzerland and New York City with collaborator Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti. Unlike Bowie's previous two albums, Lodger contained no instrumentals and a somewhat more pop-oriented style while experimenting with elements of world music and recording techniques inspired by Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. The album was not, by Bowie's standards, a major commercial success. Indifferently received by critics on its initial release, it is now widely considered to be among Bowie's most underrated albums. It was accompanied by several singles, including the UK Top 10 hit "Boys Keep Swinging". - Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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pitchfork
For as many people who saw their idealized selves in Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane, Lodger was the first time David Bowie really seemed accessible—a character with flaws and frailties, petty thoughts and grocery lists; someone who doesn't just dabble in reality but lives in it.
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APHORISTIC ALBUM REVIEWS
Lodger clearly isn’t the place to start an investigation into Bowie’s catalogue – it’s quirky, flakey, and downright weird in places, but its throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-hope-something-sticks approach throws up its share of great moments.
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John Mcferrin
All in all, this isn't a great album, but it's still an album with some great material, so it's definitely worth having.
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Only Solitaire
Experimental, for sure, but the solidity of the melodies leaves something to be desired..
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Adrian Denning
Every track is out-there, so much so, that it does indeed make a difficult listen. Yet, a listen that is somehow timeless and wonderfully brave.
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Don Ignacio
Lodger is certainly way too interesting and artistic to dismiss it, but sometimes it goes overboard.
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Robert Christgau
I used to think Bowie was middlebrow, but now I'd prefer to call him post-middlebrow--a habitue of prematurely abandoned modernist space. Musically, these fragments of anomie don't seem felt, and lyrically they don't seem thought through. But that's part of their charm--the way they confound categories of sensibility and sophistication is so frustrating it's satisfying, at least if you have your doubts about the categories. Less satisfying, actually, than the impact of the record as a whole.
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Medium
The last and least known of the Berlin Trilogy. Honestly, I wasn’t very familiar with it. I really enjoyed it but didn’t remember much as soon as it was over. After listening to 13 Bowie albums, this was really unmemorable.
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Mark Prindle
it's a really dancey record, and quirky (perhaps TOO quirky for many critics?), but also awfully interesting in the production department with lots of little effects and repeated noises that you likely have never heard in pop music before.
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RollingStone
Bowie seems less than interested, neither a serious savior nor a serious aesthete. It’s as if the role of savior now bores him, and thus — paradoxically, one would have thought years ago — leaves him without the energy to pursue his life as an aesthete with the intensity it demands. That’s disturbing, because for David Bowie, life as an aesthete is not a role at all.
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ALL MUSIC
Lodger has an edgier, more minimalistic bent than its two predecessors, which makes it more accessible for rock fans, as well as giving it a more immediate, emotional impact.
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UCR
Lodger might always be considered the least essential part of a trilogy, but as a postcard from one of Bowie's most exciting phases, it's a fascinating glimpse of the artist in the midst of a bold transition.
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sputnik music
We’re going to sail to the hinterland.
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POST PUNK MONK
the whiff of Talking Heads hangs over this album like a phantasm.
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UNSUNG
All the record, if very brief, still shimmers with the talents of the best Bowie: unpredictable vocal melodies and a rare ability for turning the strange and the unorthodox in pretty pretty tunes.
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Vulture Hound
That album saw Bowie wrestling the mainstream back from the pretenders to his crown, spawning massive hits in Ashes To Ashes and Fashion. Lodger, with its conventional song structures and David Mallet-directed promos, is just an uneasy transitional step towards that album?
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