New releases are finally, slowly, starting to appear in 2022. I'm liking the new Elvis Costello and may visit that one soon, and “Dodging Dues” by Garcia Peoples is currently blowing me away. But this album is a wonderful gift from the Bowie archives to get the new year rolling and deserves to have the spotlight to itself this week.
• David Bowie, Toy – There’s a direct connection for me between this album and Bruce Springsteen’s impressive Letter to You from 2020. On that album, Bruce resurrected three of his earliest demo songs, dating back to before his first record contract with Columbia in 1973. He recorded them again, live in his home studio, with the older, road-tested E Street Band. The performances of all three are revelatory and push the album right near the top of my list of all-time Springsteen records. There’s something about the older artist revisiting his younger self with such empathy and passion that I find deeply compelling. Toy finds Bowie doing the same thing, to equally impressive effect.
In 2000, Dave and his touring band had just come off the road for his Hours album. They had been energized during the tour by rehearsing and including a few early songs that Bowie had recorded as demos to try to hustle himself up a record contract, as far back as 1964. The fun they had playing the old, almost unknown, tunes live prompted Bowie to gather the troops and quickly cut an album, live in the studio, of songs he originally wrote and recorded between 1964 and 1971. The resulting album, Toy, was supposed to be a “surprise” post-tour present for his fans back in 2001, but the surprise was on Dave when his record label wouldn’t (couldn’t?) release it because they were in the toilet financially. Bowie left EMI/Virgin, signed with the more financially stable Columbia, and went to work on his next project, Heathen, leaving Toy to sit on the shelf until late last year. It popped up first in the Brilliant Adventure (1992 – 2001) box set last November and saw a stand-alone release this month as Toy: Box, with alternate and live recordings of the songs included. I’m only going to be discussing the original 12-song Toy album, the alternate stuff is up to you and your level of Bowie fanaticism. And that creepy cover, you might be wondering? I can’t find much concrete info about where it came from, but the consensus seems to be that Bowie designed it himself back in the day, crudely superimposing his adult face over one of his actual baby pictures using his admittedly rudimentary Photoshop skills.
Was Toy worth the wait? Oh yeah, I’m giving it two giant, Sissy Hankshaw-sized thumbs up. I had heard several of the original songs over the years and, just like Springsteen’s early demos, they sound like an under-developed version of the artist we came to know. To use a British descriptor, they’re twee-sounding; too careful, too thin, too theatrical by half. Toy is looser, swings harder, and is, thankfully, more rock and roll than the immature versions. Bowie’s singing is spectacular from start to finish, absent the obvious Anthony Newley influence he leaned on so hard in his early days (listen to the original “Silly Boy Blue” sometime). His songwriting was simpler and more straightforward back then, allowing the band to not overthink things and just have a great time playing the tunes. Compared to the denser, more complex melodies and arrangements he was recording on his proper studio releases at the time, everybody seems to be having a lot more fun here.
The opener, “I Dig Everything,” is catchy and breezy and very 60s London sounding, with agreeably pushy electric guitars. “Let Me Sleep Beside You” is re-recorded by the artist who made Aladdin Sane in the meantime, and was able to conjure up the angular, artsy approach to a still-hooky rock song he mastered on that record. The lower-register croon Bowie uses to sing “Conversation Piece” first appeared on his records around the time of Diamond Dogs and has been used to great effect countless times since. “London Boys” has a musical and vocal crescendo that’ll remind long time fans of the brilliant “Five Years” from Ziggy Stardust. His most famous pre-Major Tom single, “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” from 1966, is reworked to make its aping of the early Kinks’ singles even more obvious, and way more fun. In short, Bowie applied the vast amount of performing and recording sophistication he had learned in the decades since he wrote these songs and turned them all into uniquely affecting, and highly entertaining, jewels. The odd-man-out song here, the final cut, “Toy (Your Turn to Drive),” is a newer one, written and recorded during the Toy sessions. It sounds like the work Bowie was doing on his regular albums at the time; more complex and rigid, less tuneful. Not a bad song by any means, but I don’t quite get why it’s here, other than to provide the album title.
Bottom line, Toy is an outstanding, most welcome David Bowie album, with a looseness and spunk very reminiscent of the seminal Pin-Ups. It'll be staying in my personal rotation long into the foreseeable future. In case it matters, I greatly prefer the original, hotter live studio mix to the included 2021 remaster, an unnecessary clean-up job for the digital audience.
EARWORM: “Karma Man” (1970) – A great example of how completely irresistible Toy sounds from start to finish.
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