David Bowie: Reality

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating * * * *)

He's wasted no time in following up last year's Heathen, the first album of his in an age, where the bold concepts which overbaked and quickly dated much of his 90s output didn't get in the way.

It was a David Bowie album on which he sounded like David Bowie without trying too hard, having found a way to balance his artistic legacy, his position as spry but mid-fiftysomething music veteran, his lateral way with a song - his or someone else's - and it showed he wasn't tired of rock'n'roll.

It worked. It even sold a million copies to fans who may have finally forgiven him the sins of his 80s.

And here, it sounds like Bowie has figured it's a trick worth repeating.

Reality would seem to be very much Heathen's sequel and nearly its equal. Though it's not as cohesive, and it does sound more like Bowie-and-band, with his regular live backing group - the ones he's rumoured to be bringing to Western Springs in February on a world tour which is concentrating on his greatest hits - helping to give this a funky, wired feel reminiscent in parts of 1975's soul set Young Americans and 1980's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) .

Like Heathen, it too has old studio partner Tony Visconti in the producer's chair and on bass duties.

Song-wise, it has his adopted hometown of New York on its mind, right from the opening line of first track New Killer Star: "See a great white scar over Battery Park" he sings in an obvious 9/11 reference as its glammy electro-pop swaggers forth.

Later, She'll Drive the Big Car is set in a vehicle travelling "south along the Hudson".

Predictably, Bowie's also contemplating his own dotage.

He's doing that rather obviously on Never Get Old, which echoes both one-time collaborator Brian Eno and the likes of his own Golden Years.

And on the closing Bring Me the Disco King - a long, jazz-framed, piano-powered number - the remarkably well-preserved Bowie of 2003 seems to address the unhealthy thin white duke of a quarter century ago.

There's another affecting ivory-tickling number on the fragile The Loneliest Guy.

Elsewhere, Bowie is again displaying his magpie tendencies - turning Jonathon Richman's one-time acoustic ditty Pablo Picasso into a rocker of Suffragette City dimensions, which works, amusingly.

His take on the George Harrison-penned Try Some, Buy Some (originally sung by Ronnie Spector), while undoubtedly well meant, is also the album's weakest track for its self-conscious, flowery, 60s, heavy-on-the-harpsichord arrangement.

But Reality also rocks like a man who doesn't care if he creases his suit. Especially on the late-arriving headrush of the title track, the uptempo, soul-styled Looking for Water, and at its best on Fall Dog Bombs the Moon which sounds two part Heroes to equal parts Iggy and Pixies.

It all makes for an intriguing set. One that may not have quite the focus of Heathen, but shows the Bowie of the noughties is making better albums than the erratic output of his previous two decades.

Label: Columbia