Retro Reviews: David Bowie: Station To Station

    I decided to launch a new series to imagine myself as a critic at the end of the 60s and start of the 70s, and to rectify certain reviews from Rolling Stone magazine and Creem. This not meant to be contrarian, but to offer a more balanced perspective. All the albums reviewed are indeed classic albums. 

David Bowie – Station to Station (1976)

*****

Producers: David Bowie, Harry Maslin

Musicians: David Bowie, Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick, George Murray, Dennis Davis, Roy Bittan, Warren Peace, Harry Maslin

Songs: Station To Station, Golden Years, Word On A Wing, TVC 15, Stay, Wild Is The Wind

Reviewed By Matthew Anthony Allair

    David Bowie’s follow-up to last years Young Americans is a marked evolution from the white soul that was offered up from that album. The main shift is producers as Harry Maslin takes the helm, Carlos Alomar has been brought back, but Earl Slick has been brought in to add an extra rock edge, perhaps this is Bowie’s acknowledgment that Mick Ronson had given a needed component, yet don’t make the mistake, the accent of rhythm is all important with this release. While reviews from peers have been quite decent, I have to strongly disagree with Dave Marsh’s assessment that this album is ‘inconsequential filler’, this is nonsense, if true, I wouldn’t say this album is any more inconsequential that Lennon’s Mind Games (1973) or Walls and Bridges (1974). Bowie has completely removed himself from his glam rock persona at this stage.

    The album does seem to be a darker meditation on what had been explored with Young Americans. This time, the paranoia seems more desperate and sounds like a man, or character, who doesn’t like what he’s become, and perhaps can’t overcome it. The six tracks move at a good pace, and are varied. The album seems to coincide with Bowie’s first acting role The Man Who Fell To Earth, Jerome Thomas Newton, the title character of that film, and his new persona The Thin White Duke may mirror each other, but the Duke may be even more disturbing. The title track has an epic, and long build, the lyrics seem to build to a paranoid delusion, and a romance with addiction. “Golden Years” has been released as the single, the rhythmic groove has enough of an off-kilter quality to keep it enticing. The piano of “Word On A Wing” has a hymn like moment, before this mid-tempo ballad shifts into its core. Roy Bitten’s work anchors the piece. 

    The second half opens with the Rock N Roll whimsy of “TVC 15” with its barrel house piano, and dissonate guitar work that offers an ode to a British television station, but the tone belies that fact that this is likely an addict with an obsession. The album leans into dark funk with “Stay”, a track where Slick offers a fine balance to Alomar groove. The song seems to offer a moment of clarity for a person breaking out of a trap and in need of salvation from another. That moment of clarity is brought back with the album closer and ballad “Wild Is The Wind”, a cover from Dimitri Tiomkin, Bowie delivers a fine performance with a bottomless sadness. There’s nothing heroic about the tone of the album, unlike the Ziggy persona that offered glimmers of hope, it sounds like a persona that is trapped and wrapped in an enigma. Lost in the maze of their own design.

    This album hints that Bowie is headed in some fascinating directions, but one doesn’t know where those winds will blow. I will be curious.