Album Review: Tin Machine, "Tin Machine II"

The Return of the thin White Duke!  Yeh, Bowie’s back,  albeit under the guise of TIN MACHINE.  Tin Machine II is, as you'll have guessed from the title, the second TIN MACHINE album,  and starting on a positive note,  a slight improvement on their last effort.

What Bowie seems to be attempting with his TIN MACHINE project is a return to the roots, the quintessential spirit of rock and roll.  No,  not  quite Robert Johnson or Bo Diddley, but he now favours, generally speaking, an energized garage band, rock n' roll sound (including a most expensive garage production!) with a contemporary idiosyncratic twist; that twist derived from the left-field rock influences that pepper some of the songs. 

Prime examples of that are the thrashy Big Hurt, a frenzied cacophony of noise, where Bowie’s distinctive vocal histrionics become somewhat overwrought. On Goodbye Mr Ed they flirt only half-convincingly with psychedelic-tinged indie rock metal.  Whilst Amlapura is in a more airy, dreamy vein and hints that the old codger has been picking his ear up to THE PIXIES and JANE'S ADDICTION of late.


Elsewhere, TIN MACHINE are more convincing when focusing on on straight-down-the-line rock and roll. If There Was Something is a dirty big slab of gritty raunch n’ roll. Stateside  is  raw-boned n’ bluesy. But the current single You Belong to Rock n Roll promptly bites the dust after a promising start. Then there's the lackluster You Can't Talk, further handicapped by a feeble chorus and an irritating minimalist funk guitar motif. 

I'm sure that he had a lot of fun making the record, and he's no boring old fart by any means,  but, as far as I'm concerned, it's the songs born out of hunger, passion, and pain that sparkle in the rain.

Tin Machine frankly lack that sparkle.



Grade B- 

Mark Liddell
Riff Raff
Sept 1991


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