''David Bowie' by David Bowie

There are good reasons for quietly disowning a debut album later in your career. Perhaps it’s clearly inferior to the rest of your work, or perhaps it’s just too stylistically different from later albums to make sense of. Neither of these reasons really explains the status of ‘David Bowie’, however. For many years, Bowie’s quasi-official discography has had ‘Space Oddity’ at the beginning, and ‘David Bowie’, the album that came first, has been largely overlooked.

In terms of quality and style, it’s a mixed bag. Some if it is genuinely very good, other bits, less so. ‘Uncle Arthur’ and ‘Little Bombadier’ are the sort of character study that Blur would go on to forge a career with, and its lots of fun, but a bit twee.

‘Sell Me A Coat’ has a lovely arrangement and melody, especially in its verses. ‘Love You Til Tuesday’ is a fantastic sixties-style gem (though close to being ruined by the last few seconds). ‘When I Live My Dream’ is a bit schmaltzy, but it works.

‘Rubber Band’ mixes unconventional arrangements with bizarre lyrics, but generally remain interesting, and fairly good. ‘We Are Hungry Men’ is a slightly deranged pointer in the direction of ‘Hunky Dory’ and, in a sense, ‘Diamond Dogs’. ‘Please Mr Gravedigger’ is possibly the oddest album closer in the Bowie catalogue – unsettling, off-key, barely even a song, it’s a difficult lesson, and a key indication of Bowie’s determination to follow his own path.

At times, the affectations of the album veer towards irritating, and it may not have dated amazingly well, but there’s plenty to enjoy here. It’s certainly more interesting than ‘Space Oddity’, even if it has nothing to match the quality of that album’s title track, and although there was a jump of styles between those two albums, the jump between ‘Space Oddity’ and ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ was bigger still. On the plus side, because of its relegation to ‘largely forgotten status’, this album can be picked up cheaply and easily.