{^Ziggy Stardust} wrote the blueprint for {$David Bowie}'s hard-rocking {\glam}, and {^Aladdin Sane} essentially follows the pattern, for both better and worse. A lighter affair than {^Ziggy Stardust}, {^Aladdin Sane} is actually a stranger album than its predecessor, buoyed by bizarre {\lounge}-{\jazz} flourishes from pianist {$Mick Garson} and a handful of winding, vaguely experimental songs. {$Bowie} abandons his futuristic obsessions to concentrate on the detached cool of New York and London hipsters, as on the compressed rockers {&"Watch That Man,"} {&"Cracked Actor,"} and {&"The Jean Genie."} {$Bowie} follows the hard stuff with the jazzy, dissonant sprawls of {&"Lady Grinning Soul,"} {&"Aladdin Sane,"} and {&"Time,"} all of which manage to be both campy and avant-garde simultaneously, while the sweepingly cinematic {&"Drive-In Saturday"} is a soaring fusion of sci-fi {\doo wop} and melodramatic teenage {\glam}. He lets his paranoia slip through in the clenched rhythms of {&"Panic in Detroit,"} as well as on his oddly clueless cover of {&"Let's Spend the Night Together."} For all the pleasures on {^Aladdin Sane}, there's no distinctive sound or theme to make the album cohesive; it's {$Bowie} riding the wake of {^Ziggy Stardust}, which means there's a wealth of classic material here, but not enough focus to make the album itself a classic. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide