DIAMOND DOGS

Bowie's third classic album from his glam period (we can forget about Pin-Ups as a filler album) is the natural conclusion of the emotional arc that ranges from Ziggy Stardust to Aladdin Sane to this. Whereas Ziggy came from space with a message from hope but descended into rock and roll degeneracy, and Aladdin Sane wallowed in the collapse that resulted, Diamond Dogs presents a post-glam vision of a post-apocalyptic future inhabited by punkish gangs of starving youths, in which a horrifying totalitarian society arises (the latter of which is often related to 1984, due to the cannibalising of songs from Bowie's abortive 1984 project).

With Bowie proving adept at lead guitar and a couple of misleadingly trashy glam rock songs (Diamond Dogs and Rebel Rebel), the album lures you in before hitting you with some of Bowie's most progressive works of his glam period - in particular, the sweeping and majestic triptych of Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing Reprise and the dirge of We Are the Dead. The inclusion of funk influences in 1984 prefigures Bowie's transformation into a plastic soul robot on Young Americans, and overall the album captures Bowie breaking free of the glam rock model he'd established for himself to take in a wider range of musical influences. I think it might be the best album he produced until Scary Monsters.