Or garbage sorting

And it's no game

THE MUSIC BOWIE employs on Scary Monsters matches this consciousness of sub-terranean gloom: it is shuddering, dissonant, ponderous, complex. "Scream Like a Baby" opens with a thud from George Murray's bass and a wail from Bowie; then, to a leaden bass drum beat and descending synthesized tones it tells a story of pointless assimilation:

Thrown into the wagon

Blindfold chains and stomped on us

Took away our clothes and things

Pumped us full of strange drugs

And oh I saw Sam talking

Spitting in their eyes

But now I lay me down to sleep

But now I close my eyes

And I'm learning to be a part of soci...societ...

Elsewhere Bowie uses ballads ("Teenage Wildfire"), funk ("Fashion"), and pop ("Up the Hill Backwards") to deliver his dejection. But the dominant musical scheme of Scary Monsters is a more accessible, refined edition of Bowie's sound on Heroes--guitar screams and synthesizer whooshes on top and an aggressively precise bass on bottom frame Bowie's vocal trapeze act, which swings from throaty baritone to wide-open tenor with effort but control.

By far the most memorably disturbing song on Scary Monsters is "Ashes to Ashes," a deceptively sugar-coated single that promises a bed-time story and delivers Bowie's confession instead:

I've never done good things