This is David Bowie's interpretation/homage to George Orwell's masterpiece, "1984". Regardless of whether or not you have read Orwell's novel, you'll surely love, or at least like, or at the very least, appreciate, Bowie's venture into the realm of the frightening and apocalyptic vision of the reign of the "Diamond Dogs." The only radio-friendly singles to be found on this album are the title track, and "Rebel Rebel," which are both magnificent songs. The best tracks on the album? Hardly. But I guess that all depends on the criteria by which you judge. If you are a die-hard Bowie fan, then you will very likely have more appreciation for the other lesser- known songs on the album, some of which are somewhat difficult to ingest, but even if you are not one of those insatiable Bowie fans (to which group I myself pertain), then you might at least acknowledge the mystery and intensity of Bowie's approach. . . Nobody in the rock business quite expresses themself in the way that Bowie does, and this album provides substantial proof for such a claim. Some of his best lyrics are to be found on this album. "Candidate" for example: "I'll make you a deal, like any other candidate/ we'll pretend we're walking home because your future's at stake/ my set was amazing and even smells like the street/ there's a bar at the end where I can meet you and your friend". . . Revolutionary, yes, this album is ever so much so. . . Bowie would have been hounded by the Mc Carthy era agents were this album to have been produced during that time! Even so, this album might be problematic for some people who do not (or are afraid to acknowledge) that the threat of "Big Brother" is always looming before us, eager to deprive us of our liberties as free-thinking individuals. This is the closest that Bowie has ever come to reflecting upon politics in an album (well, he kind of did so on "Scary Monsters", but not in such a straightforward way). . . "Because hope, boys, is a cheap thing, cheap thing" he sings. This is not a light-hearted album, and certainly not for the faint-of-heart or the close-minded. Bowie as politico: it may seem strange, but on this album, it is true. He has made allusions to figures such as Che Guevara (in "Alladin Sane") in the past, and even poked a certain amount of fun at Richard Nixon (on "Young Americans"), but this is the closest that Bowie comes to approaching the realm of politics. There is an isolated "love song" (although it is one of the cautious and jaded sort), "Rock and Roll with Me," but the rest of the oeuvre on "Diamond Dogs" is of a very different nature. . . "We are the Dead" is perhaps the counterpoint to "Rock and Roll with Me": the imminent threat of "Big Brother" overwhelms the romantic notions between lovers which would otherwise remain free and intact. . . "We're tomorrow's scrambled creatures/locked into tomorrow's double feature/ Heaven's on the pillow/ as silence competes with hell. . . Because of all we've seen/ because of all we've said/ we are the dead". . . Major Tom, Alladin Sane, and Ziggy Stardust seem to have been replaced by a very frightened (and, of course, still wonderfully androgynous; this is Bowie, after all!) and prophetic character who senses a sort of apocalypse in all of our human actions/deeds/misdeeds. This album was made in 1974, and it remains more than pertinent today, in which we are all terrified of the threat of war and destruction. . . In fact, I was listening to this album while driving around one day, and finding both pro-war and anti-war demonstrators on a street corner, and it could not have been any more appropriate. . . "The Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" was playing as I drove by the manifestors/protestors, and that moment in time seemed almost frozen. . . I do not know how Bowie feels about what is occuring in our country in regard to the Middle East, but I do find that this album manifests many of the conflicting emotions that we are all feeling at the moment. . . The demo version of "Candidate" on this album strikes me as especially poignant, however. . . shall we "pretend that we are walking home", then?