STATION TO STATION

After Bowie's rather dangerous flirtations with soul music in the 'Young Americans' album, he decided to...experiment a bit with his next release. Now at this point he was already drugged up to the eye balls, and was on a diet of milk, peppers and cocaine (don't think that's very balanced). Now the weird but also brilliant thing about this album is that Bowie himself actually can't remember making the album. Now I do find this hilarious, but in many ways, it does give the album a sense of mystery.

Sound wise the album mixes the soul era Bowie with some more experimental sounds. Due to the popularisation of the Krautrock genre, Bowie decided to create a new persona. Enter The Thin White Duke. A brilliant new character who is basically a rather nasty but soulful person. And that's the best way to describe this album. It does have a rather dark side behind it, especially lyrically, but there is a rather sweet and brooding side to it as well.

The title track, being Bowie's longest composition to date, reaching over the 10 minute work has to be one of my personal favourites and one of Bowie's major magnum opus'. Starting off with a brilliant noisy and experimental intro it then explodes into a rather dark vocal performance from Bowie, singing about drugs and such. The song does reach anthemic heights at the end and does go through some surprising changes throughout, but it does blend so well.

The albums lead single 'Golden Years' also shows to be one of the stand out tracks. A very soul influenced song with a rather catchy chorus and memorable guitar riff, it does get stuck in your head very easily.

'Wind On A Prayer' is a rather beautiful blend of soul music with some gospel elements. A beautiful composition, with some nice vocals from Bowie.

'TVC15' is one of the more upbeat songs on the album. With a rather funk accompaniment, it has a lot of interesting twists and turns through out it which makes it a lot more enjoyable in my opinion.

The albums last song 'Wild Is The Wind' is oddly enough a cover song. Usually when Bowie does covers, I'm not usually interested, but he did do this song justice and make it his own. A beautiful ending to the album.

In conclusion, I am slightly mixed at times with this album. While some of it I absolutely love, some of it I see is Bowie by numbers or Bowie playing it safe. The album was another daring leap for him and was showing echoes of a world to come. I do think this is one of Bowie's best, but there are some flaws on it which do keep me back from loving it too much.

8.3/10

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