heavy! highenergy killer techniques, back into his 1966-ish, Tony Newley/poprock thang, and happily so:
Hunky is his most easily accessible, and thus most readily enjoyable work since his
Man Of Words/Man of Music album of 1969.
Much of The Man Who Sold's appeal is derived from the incredible ferocity of Bowie's accompanist's instrumental backing and from Tony Visconti's masterful production, which propelled it into a tie with the Move's Shazam for the title of the best-recorded and-mixed heavy! album of all eternity. Relative to Bowie's own talents it was erratic in the extreme, tedious music and hopelessly obscure (and sometimes downright embarrassing) words alternating frequently within the space of a verse with exciting melodic phrases and poignant, incisive lyrics.
Hunky Dory not only represents Bowie's most engaging album musically, but also finds him once more writing literally enough to let the listener examine his ideas comfortably, without having to withstand a barrage of seemingly impregnable verbiage before getting at an idea–only in "The Bewlay Brothers" does he succumb to the temptation to grant his poetic faculties completely free rein, and there with expectedly frustrating results.
Here the backing, including strings, doesn't oppress him as it sometimes did in The Man, but rather creates a casual pop atmosphere in which Dave's voice, which loves to entertain company, is free to perform all manner of little tricks for us. To top all of this off, Ken Scott's production is quite splendid–delicious little flourishes of the sort that the casual listener will not detect but that one who gives the record a few serious spins will find thrilling abound, like, say, Mick Ronson's guitar suddenly beginning to echo distantly at the onset of a solo.
While compiling material for this album Dave's thoughts apparently turned frequently to the imminence of the birth of his first son, Zowie, which preoccupation is reflected in the album's two obvious candidates for release as a single, "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Kooks." The former, which was a hit in England for Herman Hermit, intimates that homo superior–the superman race–is about to emerge, implicitly in the form of the wee Bowie. "Kooks," which is even catchier, finds Dave urging the infant to stick around with his folks, shameless aberrants though they may be, with such lines as, "Don't pick fights with the bullies or the cads/'Cause I'm not much cop at punching other, people's Dads," revealing remarkable self-candor on
