#305 David Bowie - Heroes

I know! You'd assume, given how into Ziggy, Hunky, Oddity, MWStW, etc, I am that I would have heard all the Bowie albums by now. Fact is, I'm much better at hearing the best by a given act and I'm crap, oftentimes, at following up on the rest. Fact is, Bowie has a lot of albums, and his wild variety is a double-edged sword, denying any assurance of quality from a given album. But AMG liked this one, and at some point I endeavored to hear the remaining 2/3rds of the Berlin trilogy. For the record, my take on the Bowie oeuvre:

All-Time Holy Shit Classics: Ziggy, Hunky Dory
Great: The Man Who Sold the World
Damn Good: Space Oddity, Diamond Dogs
Just Good: Aladdin Sane, Low
Actually Pretty Bad: Lets Dance, Heathen

Haven't heard the rest.

Low was (inexplicably!) Pitchforks #1 album of the 70's, and the first of the aforementioned Berlin trilogy. It never moved me all that much. Here, Heroes is the 2nd, and I generally like it better.

Both albums consist of a first act of jagged, erratic, tin pop songs, followed by a second act of ambient Enoism. This album's first half is stronger; Joe the Lion is a rocker, and Blackout and Beauty and the Beast are masterfully, if somewhat unlistenably, erratic. And Heroes is a bonafide classic, doing everything U2'a Zooropa (which I loved!) did, but better.

Other bits don't move me. Sons of Sound is a bit too plastic soul, The Secret Life of Arabia pulls a similar stunt, but fares slightly better.

Then there's the ambient bits. The track 7-9 run of Enoism that mushes together for me. Its better than Low's I think, I like the vaguely Lynchian vibe on Sense of Doubt, but then I couldn't hum a note off Low's second half if you put a gun to my head, so what do I know?

On a track level, I don't like the ambient section any better than the corresponding bits on Low. But on an album level, the whole thing works better for me, than Low. The serrated pop bits flow into the ambient bits better thanks to the straddling V2-Schnieder, and the comparatively short span of ambient bits doesn't maraud the momentum quite so severely. It's kind of like The King of Limbs in reverse, the traditional stuff up front, with the ambient hoo hah to follow.

Ok, this is all awfully relative. As an album? Its kind of brilliant, if not that fun to listen to (Heroes excepted). It's grown on me across 2 listens, and it has a Berlin-i-ness that I find somewhat exotic. Maybe I just like it because I like it better than Low, which maybe I only didn't like because it was so overhyped. Apparently, its reflexive, infinite doubt spiral night on newnewnewnew. I think this probably falls, in the long term, above Space Oddity and below Diamond Dogs, in the Damn Good category above, which is good for about 4/5