Station To Station [Enhanced]

I was thinking very carefully about WHY I love this album so much and consider it Bowie's best album, which is saying a lot because he's recorded some fantastic albums. I hate to endorse drug use, but maybe the coke had something to do with it. Would Bowie have come up with this album without the influence of coke? Would the Beatles have come up with "Sgt. Pepper" without the influence of acid? I would say highly unlikely on both counts.

Whatever the coke did to Bowie's brain at this time, I definitely find Bowie's musical statements compelling. Bowie's pre-"Station to Station" albums found him searching for the voice he achieved on "Station to Station."

All his albums have flashes of brilliance, but "Station to Station" finds that brilliance sustained throughout. Bowie sings better. That nasal "Anthony Newley" voice of yore is gone. There is a depth and resonance to his voice on "Station to Station." His vocal control is amazing. His finest recorded vocal of all time may be his track, "Wild is the Wind." Bowie writes better. Gone are the wordy, precious, pretentious lyrics he could so annoyingly write on his earlier albums. His words are sharp like razors. He keeps the words clean and concise, but with an edge of danger.

Like the Beatles did with "Sgt. Pepper," Bowies hits just the right balance of pop music and experimental music. His post-"S.T.S" albums with Eno would veer further into the experimental realm. But none of the Eno projects hit this brilliant balance of pop/experimental music which is achieved on "S.T.S."

The Thin White Duke is not Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dog, or the reincarnation of Lauren Bacall's 1940's youth. The Thin White Duke is more of a ghost than a persona. Where Bowie's pre-"S.T.S" albums were often clearly concept pieces centered around a clearly defined persona, "S.T.S" has no precise concept. The six songs on the album stand alone with no problem. There is no looming persona to tie them all together. The Thin White Duke is only mentioned in the title cut, and the Thin White Duke is essentially a spectre hovering around this album who may, or may not, drift into focus sporadically. The album works just as well if the Thin White Duke didn't exist at all.

Post-"S.T.S" albums in the seventies would find Bowie trying to make "experimental" albums while regaining his health, attempting to live a "normal" life in Berlin, becoming a good father to his son, and maintaining his dominant voice in modern rock while being assailed, or praised, by punk/new wave bands as both a "dinosaur" and a "icon."

"Station to Station" sounds just as vital and progressive today, twenty-eight years after its release, as it did when it was released in 1976. How many other albums released in that year can claim that credit.

These two albums fuse jazz, funk and rock, leaving the listener clamoring for more.

And the vibe from Station to Station can't be topped!

Bowie adopts a new persona, the Thin White Duke. This cold New European, forever restless, introduces the whole album on the title song. Station to Station is about the strains of the three-day train journey from New York to Los Angeles - all condensed into ten minutes of music. It begins with the sound of a train moving from speaker to speaker and ends as an all-out rocker. "It's not the side effects of the cocaine - I'm thinking that it must be love", he tells us. Only the song's coldness and desperation prevents it from being as commercial as, say, Modern Love from his 1983 Let's Dance album.

The next song, Golden Years, was the album's only hit single. A melodic but restrained disco song with strong lyrics, it became the follow-up to to his US chart-topping song Fame. Legend has it that Bowie originally wrote the song for Elvis Presley, he reportedly rejected it.

Word On A Wing on the other hand, is a ballad about Bowie's restless searching - this time for God. Perhaps inspired by The Man Who Fell To Earth, refuge is found in the Lord and prayer. The song is literally heavenly with is choir-of-angels effect.

TVC 15, a bizarre, raunchy song inspired by a (supposedly drug-inspired) story Iggy Pop told Bowie - about how Iggy's girlfriend was swallowed by his TV set!

Stay is a smooth effort from the master. Running breathless on a funk groove, it continues on the "it's too late..." theme ("Stay . . . or do something..."). Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick get a chance to reveal their talent in the final (instrumental) two minutes of the song.

Wild Is The Wind is a cover of a song written for a 1957 western starring Anna Magnani. The romantic mood of the song seems to have inspired Bowie, his singing is brittle and vulnerable.

This cd is a must for any genuine music lover.