Artist – Album: David Bowie – Station to Station
Released: 23rd January 1976
Sounds Like: The Return of the Thin White Duke
A couple of years ago I was on a training session at my old
work and, during a break from the double entry booking and various other
accountancy dribble, one of the trainers, an immense Glaswegian ex-rugby
player, asked us what our favourite albums were. We young pups bandied about
various routine titles such as Revolver and Pet Sounds, which he swatted away
like some weedy fly-half. The best album, he told us, is this undervalued Bowie
effort; even better than a deep fried Mars bar, he almost certainly did not say.
I took his word for it, banged the album on Spotify (once I’d got home that is),
and was mightily impressed.
Before then I just used to think of David Bowie as the guy
who gave us Space Oddity and Changes and other such fluff. That, and the bizarre
musician-actor who played the Goblin King in 80’s cult movie Labyrinth. Station
to Station was a revelation: it opens with the 10 minute, amorphous title track
that flows from slow sound effect heavy introduction to the psychedelic stomp
main to the glam rock ending – this was as far removed from the Star Man that I’d
seen on repeats of Top of the Pops as possible.
The album retains this shifting temperament throughout,
taking in disco (‘Golden Years’), art-rock
(’TVC 15’) and soul balladry (‘Wild is the Wind’), with the only
consistent being Bowie’s icy, robotic alter-ego The Thin White Duke. Although
the delivery lacks warmth, his voice is still wrought with passion, and his
band manage brilliantly to cope with the ever changing moods.
At the end of the day, this record may not be to everyone’s
taste and you may not share mine and my mentor’s enthusiasm for it, but I
promise you, at the very least, it’s one of the most interesting and arresting albums you're ever likely to hear.
Albumaday... rating:
10/10
1. Station
to Station – 10:14
2. Golden
Years – 4:00
3. Word
on a Wing – 6:03
4. TVC
15 – 5:33
5. Stay
– 6:15
6. Wild
Is the Wind – 6:02
Listen to ‘TVC 15’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTjsOzeIpc0
Also released on the 23rd January:
2006: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What
I’m Not
|
Also released on the 23rd January:
2007: The Shins – Wincing the Night Away
|
Also released on the 23rd January:
2007: Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
|
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