{"id":40924,"date":"2008-05-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-buddha-of-suburbia\/"},"modified":"2008-05-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-27T00:00:00","slug":"the-buddha-of-suburbia","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-buddha-of-suburbia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Buddha Of Suburbia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How the hell David Bowie managed to put out such a surprisingly strong, obscure little release in the same year as his woeful solo comeback album, <i>Black Tie White Noise,<\/i> is truly baffling.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p>Written for a British TV miniseries (though only the title track was actually used in the show), <i>The Buddha Of Suburbia<\/i> is mistakenly labeled as a soundtrack when it really is a full length <st1:city><st1:place>Bowie<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> album. Nevertheless, I think the reason he was inspired to write an album full of good songs for a change is the fact that he didn\u2019t try to jump on a trend to boost his popularity \u2013 this is <st1:city><st1:place>Bowie<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> finally being himself again, and the results speak for themselves.<\/p>\n<p><i>The Buddha Of Suburbia<\/i> is a collection of fairly mellow, but well-crafted pop tunes with <st1:city><st1:place>Bowie<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>\u2019s first quality melodies in a decade (unless you count the Tin Machine albums), like the great, melancholy title track, with its sad vocals and beautiful, chiming guitar. <\/p>\n<p>There is also an impressive diversity to the songwriting, with ambient, Eno-like instrumentals that recall Bowie\u2019s Berlin era (the jazzy \u201cSouth Horizon\u201d for example, complete with atonal piano solo), and a few energetic synth rockers that Bowie surprisingly doesn\u2019t embarrass himself with (\u201cBleed Like A Craze, Dad\u201d is as wonderfully strange as it sounds, as well as the Britpoppy \u201cDead Against It\u201d). There\u2019s even a hypnotically danceable, dark club track (\u201cSex And The Church\u201d) that sounds stylistically like a leftover from <i>Black Tie White Noise<\/i> yet is far superior to anything on that shoddy misfire.<\/p>\n<p>Although <i>The Buddha Of Suburbia<\/i> received virtually nil promotion or airplay upon release and was a total commercial failure, it has attained a cult-like reputation as one of David Bowie\u2019s best works in the years since. I agree heartily \u2013 it\u2019s full of catchy songs and intelligent, inventive instrumentation, with a subtle nod to his experimental tendencies of the past. Not to be missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":29359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5671],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-40924","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-david-bowie","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40924"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40924"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}