[.ca] Man Who Sold The World

Chronique amazon.fr:
Une chanson emblématique, celle qui a donné son titre à l'album paru en 1971, et qui sera même reprise fidèlement sur un live de Nirvana, aura suffi à faire de ce disque, une oeuvre centrale de David Bowie. C'est l'occasion de faire connaissance avec un Bowie qui flirte avec la science-fiction et l'électricité. Celle de la guitare de Mick Ronson irradie des titres comme "The Width Of A Circle" ou "Black Country Rock", la production de Tony Visconti - et son jeu de basse omniprésent - la rendant encore plus vicieuse, surtout dans les solos. Mais Bowie ne serait pas déjà Bowie s'il n'y avait des chansons comme "All The Madmen", avec ses vocaux théâtraux, ses arrangements imaginatifs, et toujours cette façon de chanter entre deux eaux. Cette ode à la folie, avec la voix bizarre, affectée, est autant une déclaration au monde qu'une profession de foi. Celle d'un artiste qui proclame son identité avec laquelle les années suivantes devront compter. --José Ruiz

From Amazon.com:
With 1970's The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie set aside his pop and singer-songwriter aspirations and headed in a harder-rocking direction. Producer Tony Visconti provided a thick, dense setting with guitarist Mick Ronson playing the role of guitar hero to Bowie's megalomaniac frontman; think Keith Richards and Mick Jagger sprinkled with fairy dust. The new approach flowered on Hunky Dory, but the outline for the master plan is here. The title track, "The Width of a Circle," and "All the Madmen" are essential Bowie, as he slips from cryptic to straightforward, celebratory wordplay. --Rob O'Connor

make that 500000000 stars, punk rock not heavy metal:
Bowies most explosive album is not ziggy stardust!!!!!!!!! Its The Man Who Sold the World, people!!! Stotty, trashy, quirky, everything that a rock record should be. I've never heard anything quite like it. Way more than just than "Bowie's heavy metal album" as some people refer to it. This album helped inspire a generation of punk rockers to come. Take a listen, you won't be let down.

letdown:
This is probably very compelling stuff for people who are into the likes of Led Zepplin. For me it just stands as a prephase to the music to be heard on Ziggy Stardust, only far less interesting. Sure, the title track is brillant, and some of the other songs (like "After All") are very good too. Lyricly Bowie has made a huge progression too, but in the end the music remains a bit of a letdown. But don't take it from me, there are thousands of people who consider this album to be one of his very best. I'm just not one of them.

Finding your way:
The revisionist reviews are interesting, because hindsight and lack of context colour and distort people's perception. There is a line between this imperfect very early hard rock album, diamond dogs, and inside/outside. Do you figure that tin machine was always bowie trying to get back to being a man who sold the world? He should have known it was one time and one place. All the madmen was a teenagers anthem, but this is not classic bowie, it is an evolutionary stage. The greatest thing about the carbon-copy Nirvana cover is that it serves to introduce teenage neophytes to this album - and they dig it. Kurt Cobain an improvement? Get a life - or get Lulu's cover version.

Dark, Brooding, & Heavy:
I've heard this album was Bowie's attempt at heavy metal. I'm not sure I agree, but the album is definitely one of his heaviest efforts. This is Bowie's second studio album, & it is strikingly different from his folk-oriented "Space Oddity". Bowie excellently employs legendary glam-rock guitarist Mick Ronson for a blusier, heavier, more distrotion-driven guitar sound. "The Man Who Sold the World" (TMWSTW) couldn't have opened with a better piece than "The Width of a Circle". It's a long, segmented song with a variety of tempo changes and it also moves the listener through a plethora of moods. "All the Madmen" is a song about, well, madmen. The eerie wooden whistles add a nice touch of lunacy to the song. "Running Gun Blues" is an all-out rocker about a war vet who comes home & embarks on a shooting spree not unlike the DC sniper incident. "She Shook Me Cold" is a dark, bluesy ditty with obvious lyrics describing a sexual encounter. My favorite song on the album is the conclusion, "The Supermen". It's a lofty, echoing piece about an apparent race of superhumans that existed before time...It reminds me of short stories from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The timpani and octave-leaping moans in the background give the song a weird, other-worldly feel. The album cover for TMWSTW is characteristically Bowie, with him sporting a tight fitting, Victorian-era silk dress. He is holding playing cards while reclining on a sofa. It's a feminine image giving off a sense of subtle danger. A drawback to TMWSTW is the sometimes muddy production of the album, thanks to Tony Visconti (maybe he's a bass player first, then a producer...). There are also a few songs like "After All" & "Saviour Machine" that I consider rather weak & forgettable. Overall, if you want a change from Bowie's (*powder-puff*) 80's & 90's material, this is an album to invest in.

3.5 stars - still finding his way:
The Man Who Sold The World (1970.) David Bowie's third album. David Bowie had only been making music for about half a decade when 1970 rolled around, but he had already shifted his sound more times than most artists do in their entire careers. He'd gone from an oldies-pop sound to more of an acoustic-style folk rock one. And come the new decade, and he was about to shift his stylings once again, in more of a rock-style direction. With guitarist Mick Ronson, he recorded his third album, The Man Who Sold The World. Read on for my review. Let me start by saying that this album is a step up from Bowie's previous two albums, self-titled and Space Oddity, but he still hadn't found his voice yet (that wouldn't happened until 1972's Ziggy Stardust.) Despite this, Bowie serves up a pretty good album. The title track is an awesome rocker that later received a huge revival in the nineties when Nirvana covered it in their legendary acoustic show. I think Bowie could have done without playing the fish on this song, but I still think it's excellent. Other noteworthy tracks include the opener, Width Of A Circle, and All The Madmen. These little masterpieces are severely underrated, and it's a shame more Bowie fans don't recognize them. For the most part this is a good album, but it tends to pale in comparison to his albums released later in the decade. There aren't any truly bad songs on this album, but many of them are subpar, hence the rating of three point five stars (out of a possible five.) Like with the other David Bowie remasters, the foreign Ryko versions have bonus tracks that can't be found on the American reissues. If you're a Bowie maniac, I suggest shelling out the extra cash and getting the remasters; you may enjoy the extra tracks. However, if you're just a typical Bowie fan, the American reissues will do just fine. In the end, this is a good album, but I remain confident that it could have been done better. I really only recommend this album to David Bowie die-hards - It may give his casual fans the wrong idea about his music, and we sure as hell don't want that happening (getting the wrong first impression of a musical artist is NEVER a good thing - and David Bowie is no exception.)

• Width of a Circle
• All the Madmen
• Black Country Rock
• After All
• Running Gun Blues
• Saviour Machine
• She Shook Me Cold
• Man Who Sold the World
• Supermen