Station to Station starts off really promising. The first two tracks are good and seem to herald a stylistic shift for Bowie. Finally, he starts sounding like an artist with a style of his own, rahter than a not always convincing genre hopping imitator.
Bowie's voice is vastly more appealing to me here than it's been up to this point as well. He's finally dropped his corny Ziggy antics, sounding quite a bit more mature and subtle in his vocal approach than previously.
The album dips a bit by the time the third track, "Word on a Wing", rolls by. The track goes on for too long for what is a fairly banal arrangement. Worse is how David's vocals get more and more highly strung and annoying as the track moves along. By the last two minutes, we've arrived at cheesy Ziggy-isms and it's ruining the mood established by the album so far.
The third track, "TVC15", is great, except for the first minute or two, where the track sounds uncomfortably much like Billy Ray Cyrus doing "Achy Breaky Heart".
Fully back on track with the funky "Stay", which is really neat and sounds more like Bowie's own style than any funk excursions he's been on in the past.
The final track, "Wild is the Wind" is largely allright, but Bowie over sings it with cheesy, unconvincing emoting. This melodrama doesn't quite sink the whole track, it just makes it more ok than good.
The album survives the slight misfires well enough that I feel like giving it a 4/5. Four really damn good tracks out of 6 is enough - and the 2 other tracks aren't bad by any means. Imperfect, but the important thing is that I feel like I had a really good time with this album.
Quite a good album and, more importantly, it has Bowie starting to sound like an artist with a musical vision of his own.
_Previous ratings:__________________
(Rated on a scale relative to only Bowie's own discography, where 1 means the worst he's done and 5 means the best he's done.)
David Bowie: 1/5
Space Oddity: 2/5
The Man Who Sold The World 4/5
Hunky Dory 3/5
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust 3/5
Aladdin Sane 3/5
PinUps 2/5
Diamond Dogs 2/5
Young Americans 1/5
Station to Station 4/5
Low
Heroes
Lodger
Scary Monsters
Let's Dance
Tonight
Never Let Me Down
Black Tie White Noise
1. Outside
Earthling
Hours
Heathen
Reality
The Next Day
Blackstar
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Getting closer to "The Berlin Trilogy" now...
), but I think there will be a lot less from here on. I fundamentally find his more mature output to be more appealing.
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