STATION TO STATION

Recorded whilst Bowie was in the depths of a horrifying cocaine habit, Station to Station salvages the soul stylings of Young Americans and makes it progressive, experimental, and weird, injecting heavy doses of Krautrock and concentrating on the most emotionally fraught moments of the previous record. The proggy epic Station to Station which opens the album has Bowie yelling "It's not the side-effects of the cocaine", and whilst there's good reasons to doubt that there's no denying that the album is far more compelling than its predecessor, transitioning as it does between frenzied, out-of-control soul and motorik rhythms and pointing the way to the classic Berlin Trilogy. Although Bowie wouldn't release another masterpiece until he got to Berlin and got himself sobered up, Station to Station is most of the way there.