What people search:
 | Title : Heathen
Author : Bowie, David
Release Date : 20020611
Binding : Audio CD
Regular Price : $18.98
Amazon.com Price : $11.69
(38
%)
VISIT AMAZON.COM'S PAGE |
Editorial Reviews :
Heathen is, in essence, the first 'traditional' Bowie album worthy of kudos in years, as it successfully reunites Bowie with producer Tony Visconti, the man at the controls during Bowie's Berlin period. Heathen finds rock's greatest chameleon once again remolding his past, advancing to new vistas by moving up that metaphorical hill backward. Even more gratifying is the universally high quality of the songwriting craftsmanship on offer, where even a ditty as frivolous as 'Everyone Says 'Hi'' ('Don't stay in a sad place where they don't care how you are') hits the mark. For heavyweights who like their Bowie with furrowed-brow, the monastic aura of opener 'Sunday' sounds like a post-rock Enigma covering Nico's interpretation of Tim Hardin's 'Eulogy to Lenny Bruce,' whilst the strident savagery evidenced on an apt cover of the Pixies' 'Cactus' disposes with Frank Black's hound-dog yelp and reasserts the melody without undermining the original's obsessional score. Tin Machine ought to have sounded like this. Watch out, too, for the Robert Fripp-impersonating flamethrowing of Pete Townshend on 'Slow Burn' and the guitar of the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl lending a slacker swagger to a cover of Neil Young's 'I've Been Waiting for You' (again, much better than Tin Machine's live version). Heathen proves that Bowie's still got it. All of it. And in abundance. Awaken all ye nonbelievers.
Buyer Reviews :
Everyone knows the conventional version of the Bowie story: pop genius of the Seventies falls into forgettable stadium rock during the Eighties and then desperately tries to sound hip again over the Nineties. What has been missed however is the subtle renaissance that has occurred in his music over the last few years; indeed one day the impressive and diverse body of work he has created over the past decade may come to be seen as a second golden period. And Heathen is where it all comes together; the successful elements of his recent work are retained, while the overt attempts at sounding cool are discarded. Mix this with a musical homage to Bowie's own glorious past, and suddenly he sounds modern, relevant, and, well...really very good!
From the first notes we are warned: this is going to be a complex, at times difficult, but ultimately rewarding album. Sunday, the opening track, is immediately reminiscent of 1995's Outside, with its discordant vocals and dense music. On that earlier album Bowie re-discovered the unconventionality and adventure of his Seventies peak, but loaded it with too many semi-complete ideas. Heathen, by contrast, is a cohesive whole with more shape to it, and knowledge of where it is going. For at the death, Sunday suddenly opens out as the drums kick in, ushering us into the rest of the album.
This tempo is built on with a cover of The Pixies Cactus that sounds like Bowie probably wished he had sounded back when that band first recorded it. The Bowie take exudes the prickly intensity of his last really great work, 1980's Scary Monsters album. And next we are treated to possibly Bowie's best work since then. Slip Away is beautiful and yearning, sad and majestic, with a typically abstract lyric and vocals reminiscent of the Hunky Dory era. One of the albums best tracks, it holds it's own against any other song in the Bowie canon. Slow Burn meanwhile is all yearning guitars and thumping bass in a re-working of Heroes and Strangers When We Meet (the latter from the criminally underrated 1993 album The Buddha Of Suburbia - the moment Bowie started getting it right again). It is perhaps the centrepiece of this album, a beautifully grand song with a fantastic vocal performance from Bowie. And perhaps the highest praise of this album is that both these songs could not have been recorded by the Bowie of the past; they display the experience of an older, wiser man - and yet they are in no way jaded. Make no mistake; this is Bowie at his very best.
In the middle of the album are a series of songs that demonstrate how well Bowie has learned to hold onto and build on his recent successes while discarding the mistakes. I've Been Waiting For You is an aggressively bass driven track supported by wonderful walls of guitar. This is how Tin Machine almost sounded in the moments when they got it right - but this is far, far better. Meanwhile the wonderful I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spaceship uses the electronic beats that Bowie started experimenting with in the Nineties while remembering not to repeat the sub-Drum & Bass failures of 1997's Earthling album. This time Bowie sounds like himself, making records in 2002, not a has-been trying to jump on the bandwagon. Not an original composition, Bowie nevertheless turns this into a lovely homage to the Ziggy Stardust era, just going far enough to sound campishly Glam without being pompous. Following on in this vein is the gorgeous Everyone Says Hi, which is early Seventies era Bowie via Suede and Pulp, and would surely be a hit as a single.
The title track, which closes the album in magnificent style, brings everything together. It is reminiscent of Low with its deep groaning music and snappy drums. Indeed at one point it sounds as though it is about the morph into that album's great song Warszawa. And yet it in no way sounds dated. There are too many echoes of recent work for that. This is old and new all at once, and in that way summarizes the whole album.
Bowie back
What people search:
|
|
