Taking Sides: Bowie's Low

The extra track they put on the re-release a few years back was really good, I forget what it's called now.

However, it is a hard decision to make. I am a lot more certain that I prefer side 2 over side 1 in the case of "Heroes".

i like lodger best though

also i agree with geir

I still listened to Still all the time, but this is when Bowie, Eno and Kraftwerk started creeping into my listening. I really lived in those records during high school. I think it is a real mistake to take sides in regards to this record. This record is about escape, the entire theme of it is that your life is a mess, and the entire record is a sequence of events. It isn't just a collection of well-sequenced tracks; it is an aural narrative.

Speed of life is the intro; it sets the mood.

Breaking Glass is the first vocal track and it starts the theme of alienation and romantic disconnection. Rather than using an ice cream parlor for milkshakes cold and long, or the dream car twenty feet long, he makes the first use of the bedroom as a symbol for isolation. The lyrics are so abstract but you know exactly the feeling he is trying to convey. Rather than using elaborate lyrics to express an idea, situations become less defined and the sound is what communicates the emotion. This definitely ties into Eno's theory that lyrics in rock music are nothing but decoration, and that the real message is timbral.

What In The World is track three and this time the mood switches from agitation to extreme euphoria. The euphoria is not a healthy, genuine happiness, but more like the upward pendulum swing of bipolar disorder. The paranoia and claustrophobia of Breaking Glass is still lurking in the background, but it is submerged in the lyrics, not the delivery. The desire is there, but somehow the connection cannot be created.

This theme would make sense because Bowie's marriage to Angela was breaking up, and he went to Berlin to kick the cocaine addiction he had picked up in LA during the Thin White Duke period of his career.
Bowie has said that at the time he was confused and internally divided, so Berlin in 1976, a divided city, was the most logical place to live.

Sound And Vision is track four and it takes the upward mood swing to its highest point. It is the closest thing this album has to a super pop hit, and even at that it fails. Again, it uses the symbol of bedroom as symbol of isolation, but it makes you wonder if this is a set of chemicals talking, or perhaps really a come down? Has this person just accepted his place? Is he coming to terms with the situation? Perhaps the character is simply found solace in art, for a brief time at least. Although the mood is relatively up, it is still very emotionally ambiguous.

Always Crashing The Same Car is the lowest point on Low. The image of tearing though a parking structure is a metaphor for reckless, perhaps even suicidal behavior. It also echoes the central image of enclosed, stifling spaces. The track title refers to repeated failures in life, in the context of the album, repeated failures at real emotional connection. The emotional pendulum has swung the other way to nearly suicidal depression. The vibe is stark and brooding, it is recognition.

Be My Wife is number six. Most people think that this is a love song, but this song has absolutely nothing to do with a healthy emotional relationship. This is the sound of desperation, of clutching at straws. This is like love as an emotional high, a means of escape. The music is up, but the lyrics and vocal delivery are that of a desperate man. No matter what the long-term consequences of his actions are, he needs deliverance at this very moment. Anything to escape.

New Career in a New Town is the final track on side one. The music suggests hopeful optimism and movement. I always think of the pistons of a train when I listen to the bassline of this song. It has no lyrics, and it introduces the next side as the second part of this person’s life. It is more ambiguous but no less emotional.

The ambient half of the album follows a more linear trajectory. It starts out with the sublime quarter note octave pulsation of Warszawa, and the mood declines from there. Although Warszawa is the more obvious cut, Art Decade is the better track. It is subtler and a bit darker. Whatever relief the protagonist found in travel and the anonymity of a new life, the magic is starting to fade. The mood continues to decline into madness by the end of Subterraneans.

Was Bowie dragging in his fears of potential madness into the end of the album? Did he use the abstract nature of the lyrics and synthetic timbres on the second half as a vehicle to express the disassociated and incommunicable nature of mental illness? Was he expressing his personal fears of being schizophrenic like the older brother who introduced him to music in the first place?

I don't know, but it does give this album an interesting perspective. This is one of the few records I can say that I have truly lived in. I am not exactly sure what that says about me, or the frame of mind I was in during the later years of my teens.

but that record does exist ... it's called the pleasure principle!

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granted it would have been tough to place anywhere on either side. but somehow it's now my favorite track on the whole album.

can't believe they leave it off some versions of the album. criminals.

also, geir, you know about the 'All Saints - collected instrumentals 77-79' compilation, right?
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/masses/ab/bowie45.html

'Another green world' is so much better than side two or side one of heroes.

This week's Then Play Long update? Why is it here? Read on.

I've only just quick-scanned it (bookmarked for quality time with a glass of laphroiag, for sure) but that is fantastic.

… but you got problems

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FODvjYoVEi8&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FODvjYoVEi8&feature=youtu.be

oh shit lol xp

anyway I laughed

Same guy did this one, which is not as brilliant, but still very good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZEGHK_3W2o

Geir Hongro, may I just say that you seem like a very reasonable man indeed and I am utterly baffled why some on these boards hold you up as an example of spectacular and stubborn insanity. When I come to Norway we shall roam fjords singing the rather decent melody of 'Sombre Reptiles' together.

haha that Warszaw video is hilarious, very well done!

After some thought, this has to be Side One for me. Side Two has 'Warszawa' and 'Subterraneans', which are both indispensable for me, but every cut on Side One rules.

I listen more to side one, but I think side 2 informs side 1. You listen to it in a slightly different way because you know what's on the other side.

The extra track they put on the re-release a few years back was really good, I forget what it's called now.

― Two-Faced January (Two-Faced January), Wednesday, October 15, 2003 7:19 AM (12 years ago)

yes: you can even give it a pass over and over, but it's still there, and the more unevenly you play it, the more side 2 sounds like a discovery or a rare event

Is it just me or is the new mix crystal clear?
https://open.spotify.com/album/6DcvIymXDe8sCD1u0fzi8J

lol it's apparently just a remaster - nothing to see here... I'm just enjoying it a lot

Sides One of Low and Heroes, put together, would be the most fantastic Bowie pop record ever made

eh, fun idea ! I will try to listen to it that way. It may change the perspective.
I have loved Bowie (mostly the Ziggy period and StS) but can't really get into it anymore.

Easily in my Top 3 albums of his, alongside Station to Station and Lodger ...

How did I miss this thread at the time? Of course I prefer side 2 as it is more challenging and less conventional. And almost everything Eno touches sounds better after. Additionally I have never liked Bowie's contrived voice.

no wait there is something to see here after all:

In terms of the issue around the mastering and the additional bass or ‘bottom end’ on albums like Low and Lodger, the point was strenuously made that Tony Visconti has never been involved in remastering these albums before, and what you hear on these new remasters is how he always wanted them to sound.

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/parlophone-respond-to-david-bowie-berlin-box-set-mastering-criticisms/

interesting ! especially since I was just listening to Low/Heroes today and was wondering what the difference was between this Low remaster and the 1999 one.
And I also noticed that "drop" during "Heroes" but I thought I had touched a button or something.

I couldn't resist having a look over at the retirement home upon reading that - I instantly saw a thread that was about 180+ pages...

There will be friendships truncated and sig files revised over this...

the way the snare sound deepens and then cuts off in "breaking glass" >>>>>>

eno's convulsive blinking synth in "what in the world" >>>>>

the out of tune Iggy backing vocals on "What in the World"

yes to both of those, yes to all of Side 1, this is his pinnacle imo much as i love Lodger. still think "Heroes" is the weakest of the three

In the intro to Breaking Glass I recently noticed really quiet synth that sounds like a ringing phone that was either muted or erased and has bled into another track, kinda wish it had been left in.

I've always found this idea of a "trilogy" a bit stupid, for me I see everything from Station to Station up to Scary Monsters (including stuff like The Idiot) as one long golden period.

Do you have any idea of the context of the recording of those three particular albums?

Because if you did, you're already aware of the idiocy of your own statement.

Actually, Turrican is right insofar as the Davis-Murray years go from 1976 to 1971. And only one album was recorded in Berlin.

it's a well established shorthand, however arbitrary, let's hustle along without revisiting Taxonomy 101 for the millionth time

this is not your first rodeo

1976 to 1971?

I've always found this idea of a "trilogy" a bit stupid

i think i posted this before:

Bowie began referring to the three albums as a Berlin-centered trilogy during the promotion of Lodger, although "Heroes" was the only installment primarily recorded in the city.

song cycle begins with "sister midnight" and ends with "red money" there you go

Y'know, people say that the melody on 'Weeping Wall' is meant to be 'Scarborough Fair', but I suspect that it's actually taken from Zappa's 'Who Are the Brain Police?' (Which Bowie was a fan of and even apparently covered in the '60s)

Eh?!??!? Right, I'll have to check that out!

It's true!

ummm wow!