Week 92 | “Toy” (revisited) (2021)

For a long time, the number one contender for the title of “Great Lost Bowie Album” was Toy, a genuine studio album that was never officially released.  My entry from “Week 77,” August 31, 2019 discusses the album, unofficial versions of which were so easy to find that anyone who wanted to hear it would have multiple options.  Well, the album is slated to be officially released later this month (November 2021), and my feelings about it haven’t changed:  it still isn’t very good.

I re-read what I wrote two years ago, and I don’t have anything to add about the music itself.  Briefly, the album is mostly new (as of 2001) recordings of some of Bowie’s earliest, most obscure songs, alongside three new songs, two of which would make their way into Bowie’s (much better) album, Heathen.  My problem with the album is that despite the high production quality, despite the strength of Bowie’s voice and despite the typically good instrumentation, the songs just are not very good.

There has been a steady stream of live albums, compilations, reissues and Bowie-related merchandise since his death in 2016.  I actually haven’t been able to genuinely keep track of everything (try though I might).  With few exceptions, though, most of the posthumous Bowie releases are of songs we’ve heard before.  Technically that’s true, too, of the songs on Toy.  Most of the songs are new recordings of old songs, but those old songs aren’t on any of the albums that most fans will have heard.  Unlike live albums, to my knowledge, this is the only posthumous album Bowie recorded as a complete work, entirely in the studio.  So, it should be released, and its about time.

That it should be released does not make the album any better.  As if to signal that the listening experience will leave something to be desired, the new album has a disconcerting cover— an adult image of Bowie’s face superimposed on a photo of him as a baby.  The resulting image is not pleasant.  It isn’t even colorful— the black and white image comes off as dreary and ugly.

For a while I thought Bowie himself didn’t want to album released, perhaps because he recognized it to be a lesser work.  It turns out that it was his record company at the time that held it back.  Bowie wanted it released, and he managed to get some of the songs included as b-sides to subsequent singles.  So, for the sake of completeness, Toy should be considered an official part of Bowie’s catalogue of studio albums.

That said, I won’t be buying it.  I considered listening to the album again before writing this, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Supposedly, there’s a deluxe edition coming out next year, which I will buy, listen to and write about on this very blog.  But the version being released in time for Christmas looks like what I’ve already heard and don’t really need to hear again.

I wrote before that I’m oddly pleased by my reaction to this album— it means I’m not truly in the tank for Bowie.  The other Bowie studio album that I just don’t like is his (also obscure) self-titled debut from 1967.  The songs originated from the same time period, when Bowie was just getting started and hadn’t yet hit his stride.

It’s too much to hope that there’s a truly unknown studio album sitting in a vault somewhere containing songs that nobody has ever heard.  While Toy is not that, we’re unlikely to get anything closer.    So at least there’s that.  Too bad its not a more enjoyable piece of work.  But if it it was, Toy would have already been released.