HOURS...

Bowie had spent much of the 1990s exploring various electronic-drenched genres, with the industrial toxins of Outside and the alt-dance music of Earthling representing the peak of this. On Hours..., he begins to chart his course back to more unambiguously rock territory, with enough off-kilter production techniques to keep things weird as he crafts a set of mellow, melancholic pop-rock numbers.

Some of this comes across as mellow, chillout-Bowie, as on album opener Thursday's Child or Survive - numbers which offer pleasant background listening (much as the material on Black Tie White Noise did) without being too challenging but with enough guitar soloing and keyboard textures to keep things interesting if you choose to pay attention. Some material, on the other hand, has more bite - Something In the Air sounds downright foreboding, for instance, and kind of points the way to the territory Bowie would enter on Heathen. (This is not the only pointer to future projects here: on The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell, there's a sort of 1960s garage rock air to things, suggestive of Bowie's increased interest in revisiting the past which would culminate in the shelved Toy project.)

There's a few too many moments where the album slackens off for me to call it an unqualified success, but it's certainly better than the absolutely dreadful cover art would have you believe.