A perfectly blended, idiosyncratic parceling of Bowie's love of rock, soul, and theatre. It's fresh, deft, clean, definitive, and straight-ahead.

Station To Station is a blues-funk "Changes." For sheer vagueness, it beats Ziggy's rise and fall. Lyrics paint how fascist and exhausting life can be when career is conceit (i.e., decadence, or pretty passing care); how self-negation (i.e., the burnout's complete clasping of coldness) is its own purgative reward.

So, as never before or since, the Thin White Duke relies on grooves to give him both solace and shape. With crisp, ever-unraveling layers of detail, these are some of the most compelling man-made danceables. And if "Golden Years" isn't totally insincere, Bowie's striving to hymn proves it (e.g., the stations of the cross in "Word On A Wing").

2002-04-20 - Joe Cormack

track list Station To Station Golden Years Word On A Wing TVC15 Stay Wild Is The Wind