Taking the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme, Station to Station is a transitional album that creates its own distinctive style. Abandoning any pretense of being a soulman, yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, David Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles. Everything from epic ballads and disco to synthesized avant pop is present on Station to Station, but what ties it together is Bowie's cocaine-induced paranoia and detached musical persona. At its heart, Station to Station is an avant-garde art-rock album, most explicitly on "TVC 15" and the epic sprawl of the title track, but also on the cool crooning of "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing," as well as the disco stylings of "Golden Years." It's not an easy album to warm to, but its epic structure and clinical sound were an impressive, individualistic achievement, as well as a style that would prove enormously influential on post-punk.

CD 1: Station to Station 2010 transfer
"Station to Station" – 10:11
"Golden Years" – 4:02
"Word on a Wing" – 6:01
"TVC 15" – 5:31
"Stay" – 6:12
"Wild Is the Wind" – 6:02
2010 transfer of Station to Station from the original stereo analogue master in mini-replica sleeve.

CD 2 & 3: Live Nassau Coliseum '76
"Station to Station" – 11:53
"Suffragette City" – 3:31
"Fame" – 4:02
"Word on a Wing" – 6:06
"Stay" – 7:25
"Waiting for the Man" – 6:20
"Queen Bitch" – 3:12
"Life on Mars?" – 2:13
"Five Years" – 5:03
"Panic in Detroit" (with most of drum solo edited out) – 6:03
"Changes" (with band intro) – 4:11
"TVC 15" – 4:58
"Diamond Dogs" – 6:38
"Rebel Rebel" – 4:07
"The Jean Genie" – 7:28

Review:

When Station To Station received its initial expansion as part of Rykodisc’s reissue campaign in 1991, it was increased by only two bonus cuts both pulled from a March 23, 1976 concert at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale New York. For their extravagant deluxe reissue of David Bowie’s 1976 LP, those two bonus cuts have ballooned to two discs capturing the entire concert, and that’s just for the standard Special Edition. That SE runs three discs, the first devoted to an original analog master of Station To Station and the last two to the stellar Nassau Coliseum show, where Bowie finds a perfect balance of glam, soul and art. If that isn’t enough Station To Station for the diehards, there’s also the Deluxe Edition which is almost absurdly lavish, containing the three discs from the SE but adding the 1985 RCA CD master, which some audiophiles prefer to subsequent digital masters, a disc rounding up the single edits from the LP (including the first appearance of the “Word on a Wing” edit on CD and a previously unreleased edit of the title track), a DVD-Audio containing the original master, a 5.1 surround mix and a new stereo mix, all capped off by vinyl versions of the album proper and the Nassau Coliseum show. It is perhaps a little bit over the top for an album that is generally considered one of Bowie’s greatest but nevertheless lacks the mystique of Ziggy, Hunky Dory, Low or Heroes, but this Deluxe Edition surely delivers plenty of bang for fanatics with a deep pocketbook while the rest of us will be more than happy with the official release of the excellent Nassau Coliseum show.

...And then Station to Station is where Bowie really gets great again. I love this album, especially "Golden Years" and "TVC 15". The whole thing is really great. This and Aladdin Sane are his best so far.

Hunky Dory and Ziggy links are slow/half-dead. Fuck it

I'm curious/excited to listen to this. It's been a long time since I've heard it, but I remember liking it for the most part.

Following through with the avant-garde inclinations of Station to Station, yet explicitly breaking with David Bowie's past, Low is a dense, challenging album that confirmed his place at rock's cutting edge. Driven by dissonant synthesizers and electronics, Low is divided between brief, angular songs and atmospheric instrumentals. Throughout the record's first half, the guitars are jagged and the synthesizers drone with a menacing robotic pulse, while Bowie's vocals are unnaturally layered and overdubbed. During the instrumental half, the electronics turn cool, which is a relief after the intensity of the preceding avant pop. Half the credit for Low's success goes to Brian Eno, who explored similar ambient territory on his own releases. Eno functioned as a conduit for Bowie's ideas, and in turn Bowie made the experimentalism of not only Eno but of the German synth group Kraftwerk and the post-punk group Wire respectable, if not quite mainstream. Though a handful of the vocal pieces on Low are accessible -- "Sound and Vision" has a shimmering guitar hook, and "Be My Wife" subverts soul structure in a surprisingly catchy fashion -- the record is defiantly experimental and dense with detail, providing a new direction for the avant-garde in rock & roll.

Repeating the formula of Low's half-vocal/half-instrumental structure, Heroes develops and strengthens the sonic innovations David Bowie and Brian Eno explored on their first collaboration. The vocal songs are fuller, boasting harder rhythms and deeper layers of sound. Much of the harder-edged sound of Heroes is due to Robert Fripp's guitar, which provides a muscular foundation for the electronics, especially on the relatively conventional rock songs. Similarly, the instrumentals on Heroes are more detailed, this time showing a more explicit debt to German synth pop and European experimental rock. Essentially, the difference between Low and Heroes lies in the details, but the record is equally challenging and groundbreaking.

Maybe Drinky can explain to me the redeeming qualities of tracks 7-9.

On the surface, Lodger is the most accessible of the three Berlin-era records David Bowie made with Brian Eno, simply because there are no instrumentals and there are a handful of concise pop songs. Nevertheless, Lodger is still gnarled and twisted avant pop; what makes it different is how it incorporates such experimental tendencies into genuine songs, something that Low and Heroes purposely avoided. "D.J.," "Look Back in Anger," and "Boys Keep Swinging" have strong melodic hooks that are subverted and strengthened by the layered, dissonant productions, while the remainder of the record is divided between similarly effective avant pop and ambient instrumentals. Lodger has an edgier, more minimalistic bent than its two predecessors, which makes it more accessible for rock fans, as well as giving it a more immediate, emotional impact. It might not stretch the boundaries of rock like Low and Heroes, but it arguably utilizes those ideas in a more effective fashion.

It's amazing to me how much some of this sounds like the Talking Heads (or vice versa I suppose)