 |
| David Bowie—Low |
Bowie's collaboration with Eno has a distinct sense of complimentariness; the two employ similar styles of singing, and both come from a glam-rock background—Bowie with a plethora of glitter-laden rock and Eno being a former member of Roxy Music. When one listens to Bowie's Station to Station (1976) and Eno's Another Green World, there is the impression that the two artists were converging on similar points in their work. Rather than a joint billing, however, Eno takes a back seat to Bowie on Low, and it is Bowie's work, with the two sharing writing credits on only one song.
The art-rock of the mid-70s was approached by a similar process to jazz music. The scene had a collective of established musicians that had music to record, and other big names would often collude under the songwriter's name. Bowie here is the bandleader, just as Iggy Pop was when he and Bowie worked together on The Idiot, and the lack of ego is a refreshing feature; Bowie was ostensibly suffering from something akin to ego-loss, his latest character having been "The Thin White Duke," a nod to his excessive use of cocaine. He moved to Berlin for the very reason of quitting the drug which nearly destroyed him, and would record Low and its follow-up "Heroes" there (though in truth, the basic performances on Low were done mostly in France).
Where Station to Station was glossed like its soulful predecessor Young Americans (1976), Low is organic and often jagged. Its primal sound suggests a reconstruction of all things: Bowie's identity, lifestyle, and even his entire basic approach to making music. It can be postulated that Low represents Bowie in his most basic form, with little added flair and the lack of a flamboyant character gracing the LP's front cover, which instead simply shows a still photograph from The Man Who Fell to Earth. "Speed of Life," Bowie's probably-unwitting answer to Eno's "Sky Saw," is sparse, under-produced on first listen—a 30th-century jam, all aspects to be upheld throughout the record. "Breaking Glass" is led by the anfractuous guitar of Carlos Alomar and the halted drumming of Dennis Davis, processed by producer Tony Visconti, who did not see fit to divulge his technique; the result is something like a noise-canceling effect. Bowie's shadowy verse is self-referential: the artwork of Station to Station includes a photo of Bowie drawing the Sephirot on carpet.
"What in the World" is an inverted pop song, substituting freewheeling notions of love and harmony with glitchy lyrics and a warbling Iggy Pop. "Sound and Vision" rounds out the trio of songs with common themes of isolation, specifically staying in one's room. The drum track pops and fizzles, the guitar and Bowie's saxophone, once jazzy, now tumescent, snake around at their leisure as Bowie sings brightly about songwriting itself: his then-new trend of self-referentiality. It is, put simply, a work of recording genius. "Always Crashing in the Same Car" is characteristic of the apocalyptic feeling that affects the whole record, and actually, the song is a real story about Bowie ramming a drug dealer's car, then returning to his hotel to drive in circles.1 "Be My Wife" is the odd one out from the set, a straightforward song that only remembers its context as it spins into oblivion led by the plodding piano. Bowie concludes the side with "A New Career in a New Town," another instrumental that evokes the setting sun from its distant harmonica and a carnival of sorts from its climbing piano, night-sky synth and soft kick of the bass drum; his title is self-explanatory.
The reputation of Low's second side often eclipses the actual music. The turn of the century has brought an era in music-listening in which compilations are often pushed as the essential purchase and rarely include instrumentals, if ever, provided that does not describe their entire body of work. Low's four side-two pieces often become lost in the noise of more catchy vocal songs, and are usually spoken about collectively, or in a manner that vitiates them. The Bowie-curated All Saints, sadly, is symptomatic of these phenomena, and obscures the relevance of the work, demoting them to curiosities. What is missed in the case of Low is the cohesive sound and the idea that Bowie intended the four compositions to be reflections of his experiences in Western and Central Europe. "Warszawa," for example, is meant to depict the still-rebuilding Warsaw, Poland: haunting, miasmic synthesizer pierced only by Bowie's overdubbed chanting.
"Art Decade," a picture of West Berlin—the Berlin Wall still standing at this time—is less dramatic, but still broken, unsure, almost dangerous. "Weeping Wall" instead focuses on the barrier itself, probably suggesting with its title that the wall itself cried out; in point of fact, some sections of graffiti on the Berlin Wall were long rows of grotesque faces. The song is more rhythm-oriented than the others, with Bowie playing the vibraphone and xylophone mixed in front of his wailing and guitar. "Subterraneans" was generated from a minor piece of music from Bowie's aborted The Man Who Fell to Earth soundtrack and is about "the people who got caught in East Berlin after the separation—hence the faint jazz saxophones representing the memory of what it was."2 It is a fitting summation of the whole album's tone, including side one: another world, a dark future that has regressed to the primeval, instinctive, somber, and ominous.
Art sometimes loses relevance with time. The Berlin Wall has been eradicated and David Bowie is no longer the person he was or playing the role he did when he recorded Low. Despite this, its themes tease a deeper connection with human psyche, after all the static has been blown away with time, even if they are sometimes amorphous. Stripping down his sound allowed Bowie to rebuild his path in music, and though its words are sparse, Low exhibits Bowie at his most raw and pure. It remains not only his best album, but likely rock's greatest piece of art, and needless to say, a masterstroke.
12 Hugo Wilcken: 33⅓: Low
12 Hugo Wilcken: 33⅓: Low
Yay cdlbt!
ReplyDelete