David Bowie - Heroes
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Free Music Notes for Heroes
Free Music Review: Bowie's Greatest
Hit: 5 Stars
Listen. This is Bowie's greatest work, though I would put Outside up there as an unrecognized classic, as well as his soundtrack for The Buddha of Suburbia. And we can all go back to all the other records, because they are all pretty much in the "excellent" category. Station to Station. Low. Ziggy. My favorite: Aladin Sane. The list just goes on and on. His recent work is contemplative and worldly beautiful. There isn't a bad record in his catalog. Compare his work with anybody, anybody working now in any similar genre. Sad how far we've fallen. Sad how farther we will fall.
The inclusion of noise in various pieces here has been done in classical music since the the 1920's with musique concrete, so it should not bother anyone born after, say 1890 or so. I doubt that anyone online was born at that time. I may be wrong. Souls transmigrate, and some of them don't get it even the after hundreds of such transmigrations. Back to the karma pool. Oh, well.
Every piece on this record is amazing, and the preceding reviews note that spectacularly. I won't repeat the praise. I just want to note that the cricicism of this record is a little skewed. Few pieces of art are as timeless as this record. A new fan may not take to it immediately, but with a few listens, will become transformed, much as the lovers in the title track, which, incidentally, is available, sung in German. The German language version actually cuts the English one, it was meant to be sung in German, in which the angst finds its ultimate home, but avoid the French language version. French is a great language for pop, but not for rock and roll.
A superior album for the ages. Required listening and ownership.
Free Music Review: Title Track Perfection
Hit: 4 Stars
Let's admit it: "Heroes" is one the best songs ever created, be it by Bowie or anyone else.
That said, this album isn't exactly a perfect one that totally compliment's the title track. The first two tracks are over-produced and noisy, and I say that in a bad way. The two tracks that follow Heroes are quite moody, and that's fine. "V-2 Shneider" is a bit a fun instrumental stuck in the middle of all this, so I guess I can't bash it in any manner. The next three instrumental are execellent exercises in ambiance. The last track, "The Secret Life of Arabia" could've been on Young Americans, except for the fact that it holds up better than a lot of the material on that particular album.
Overall, this album is kept from five-star status because the two tracks that begin the album just leave a bad taste in one's mouth. Also, when compared to Low, there's a certain clunkyness in the tracklisting on Heroes. Whereas the other album flowed well and had two distinct sides, Heroes just has a fractured structure. When all is said and done, however, this is still the album that boasts the track "Heroes," and in all honesty, that makes it totally worth purchasing.
Free Music Review: Bowie and Eno's sophomore effort.
Hit: 5 Stars
In 1977, David Bowie and Brian Eno were riding a creative wave-- their first collaboration, "Low", was an artistic triumph and stands among the best work in the catalog of either musician. The followup, "Heroes", nearly equalled their first collaboration.
Following the formula of "Low", the first side of the LP was all rock songs, but this time Fripp and Eno brought in guitar virtuoso Robert Fripp to provide a third voice. The result is staggering-- the entire side is full of brilliant songs that find all three artists at the peak of their form-- explosive post-punk "Beauty and the Beast", sustained-guitar driven "Heroes" (with some of the most passionate singing Bowie has ever done), retro-modern "Sons of the Silent Age"... quite frankly, the whole side is a highlight, whether fierce and powerful ("Joe the Lion"-- check out Fripp underneath Bowie on the bridge) or the aching passion of the title track, this really is about as good as it gets in this vein.
The second side again is largely ambient pieces (excepting the closing track which is a dance piece). This material isn't quite as good as the instrumental material on "Low"-- it's not that it's uninteresting, in fact it's superb. Bowie's koto (a Japanese stringed instrument) performance over delicate synths on "Moss Garden" and the wailing saxopone on "Neukoln" make for fantastic pieces, it just doesn't quite stop you in your tracks like the second side of "Low".
Nonetheless, "Heroes" is unnervingly brilliant material, and as essential an album as anything in Bowie's catalog. Highly recommended.
Free Music Review: There's no "Sense of Doubt" about this album: It's a classic
Hit: 5 Stars
David Bowie and Brian Eno improved upon the already perfect 1977 album LOW with the ambitious HEROES. The album starts off with the legendary "Beauty and the Beast," and from that moment on it's obvious that this album defines Bowie's excursions in electronic, German-influenced music. It's the best Bowie album in the entire catalogue besides ZIGGY STARDUST, and one listen to each of the album's tracks is all it takes to realize this.
First thing is first: breaking down the music into why it works and why it doesn't work is an essential building-block in any music reviewers process, and that is exactly where I'll start on this review. There is nothing on this album that doesn't work. Every song is perfect and sounds well-thought out, yet it still avoids that certain, distinct sound most classics have (you know, that sound where the artist sounds like he knows he's making a classic record?), and it sounds like it's perpetually stuck in the future. One may go as far to say that it's aged as well as (if not, much better then) ZIGGY has. Also, another reason HEROES works so well is that Bowie's vocals and lyrics seamlessly mesh together into a desperate growl, and unlike ZIGGY, where Bowie goes to the top of rock-stardom and then the bottom of heroin and cocaine addiction pitfalls, HEROES starts off in the pit of doom and gloom and then sort of climbs up towards sanity (the exact opposite of ZIGGY). Sure, the story isn't as fleshed out as ZIGGY's (some may even say there is no story on HEROES), but be honest. Who the hell understands ZIGGY's story, anyway?
Although the music does take backseat to Bowie's screeching wails on some of the tracks, HEROES does include four instrumental tracks as LOW did before it, and they're all magnificent. In particular, "Sense of Doubt" is one of Bowie's best word-less tracks. Over some creepy background noises and ancient-sounding (that's a compliment, by the way) synthesizers, you can hear something moaning quietly, and then you can hear cars passing by. Despite the undeniable effort Bowie and Eno put into HEROES' instrumental songs, they aren't quite as good as those on LOW.
Then, after a half-hour of being in Bowie's crazy world of surreal analogy's, drug-induced paranoia, and quiet yet creepy songs showing sings of ambiance and subtle distortion, Bowie, Eno, and Carlos Alomar bring the triumphant album to a mystifying, middle-eastern-inspired ending with the outstanding track "The Secret Life of Arabia". This song is funkier then Bowie's own "Fame," and it is one of his best moments.
All in all, I'd say this and LOW both tie as Bowie and Eno's best `Berlin Trilogy' albums. 5 stars, respectively. LODGER, eat your heart out.
Free Music Review: Highroad Gone Right
Hit: 5 Stars
Though Bowie laments about his highroad gone wrong in the opening track of this album, the general consensus is that his better music requires some insanity on the side.
This effort has something very nordic about it, despite the fact that Mr. Bowie himself is not technically a squarehead.It's the musical companion to any one of Ingmar Bergman's more wacked-out films, like "Personna." The premise is that you don't hold back and if the viewer gets scared, well, the phone book is full of shrinks. Also, the pictures of Bowie are quite elfin, with him staring as never before in black and white at some troll or other. You'd not be surprised if he turned and spoke to you in old Norse.
But generally, this is an English product, extremely well-polished and mindfully transcendental, and, of course, a bit insular thank you very much. To create something as exquisite as "The Secret Life of Arabia," you have to cut through much red tape and refuse to countenance many things, like "does it float?" A koto and a barking dog - only Bowie would think of both of these things and only he (and Eno) would know just how to mix them. The socially marginalized are deep sleepers: please don't disturb them. This is as close to nirvana as a Westerner can come without getting permanently stuck in the lotus position. "Moss Garden" is (Hendrix') way over yonder across the hill, where lonliness opens the door to enlightenment and all silences are pregnant. It occasioned a dream I'll never forget, with an opening in the middle of a rapid-filled river, into which I descended to meet the buddha. A very terrifying quiet place, just like 1977. This music can be classified but I think only a few people really understand it; maybe not. Especially now that reality has reached such a level of noisy insipidness that even the dog has stopped barking and retreated under the chair. It's hard to believe such a schizoid walden could have existed. But it's not the same; you really need some bonified dementia on the outside to put things in perspective. And, despite all the trouble brewing, we've lost our psychotic edge I think. We've misplaced the trolls don't you think?
The problem is that circa 1979, the pretty people staged a coup (Elvis Costello's "emotional fascism") and we have be living under their dictatorship for 30 years now. This Hefneresque void leaves little room for group spirituality, creativity or enlightenment, however perverse and/or pure because there are a couple of clowns getting it on in the closet. We are still doomed as we were circa 1977, but not in an invigorating, interesting way, certainly not under the torqued stress that sprung out at us on "Heroes."
Bowie is hence (in its temporal sense) part of the problem. (He's pretty, rich, famous, vintage.) Today, the hero, if he existed, would say little if anything, calmly, yes calmly enjoying his glass of absinthe. As Thomas Merton put it, "the time of the end is the time of no space." What this means to a dope like me is that, at some point, it's time for Judgment Day, not the next avant-garde statement. This time has already passed as even Bowie on "Reality" admits indirectly that he simply can't out avant-garde himself. The "underground" reclaims its original meaning - Hell, Hades - and there are things called "resurrections" and states called "in majesty" and a book called the Catholic missal. Staging some assinine art show at an abandoned elevated train track in New York City does not, I'm afraid, do much to slow the pace of space-reduction. The age of the Warholian individual-freak is giving way to that of the real Messiah, who unfortunately doesn't care that much for rock and roll and its self-annointed saints.
But van Gogh and Gauguin had this all figured out 120 years ago and look what good it did them.