David Bowie - Toy (2022 Reissue)

Heavily bootlegged over the years, Toy is an album David Bowie recorded in 2000, right between Hours and Heathen. The concept was simple: Bowie took his touring band into the studio to revisit a bunch of songs he wrote and recorded prior to becoming a superstar. Although "Shadow Man" comes from the Ziggy Stardust sessions, most of the songs date from the days before "Space Oddity," so they're grounded in British rock & roll and mod R&B -- a far cry from both his glam rock of the 1970s and the electronic-inflected art rock of the 1990s.

It's a record out of time, with the songs clearly from the swinging '60s and the production being very much a product of the slick Y2K era, yet that's also its charm: it's Bowie revisiting his past from a particular perspective that is as of its time as the original songs.

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