LOW

The first part of the Berlin Trilogy, which is incidentally also considered to be the artistic peak of David Bowie's Art Rock career, is an album that baffled me the first time I heard it and has continued to do so up until today.

Even if Bowie did manage to stabilize his artistic direction after the mixed bag that was offered on Station To Station, this stability came at the price of less interesting collection of performances. Although, apparently both critics and fans liked this album enough to proclaim it to be one of his best efforts! What's not to like when you have great tunes like Speed Of Life and Sound And Vision? Well, that's exactly my point, these songs aren't even remotely representative of Bowie's career, so how can Low get all this credit?

I must admit that starting a David Bowie album with an instrumental was a very daring move on the artist's part but, in a way, it also works as a foreshadowing of the things to come. Side one consists of very short numbers that don't exactly overstay their welcome, but at the same time also lack momentum for me to really get into any of them. Only once we get to Warszawa, track number 8 out of 11(!), the music finally gets the attention it was completely shunned up to this point. This track is also my favorite out of the bunch since it really bring out some interesting new qualities to Bowie's style and, thanks to Brian Eno's careful direction, this style sound very natural in Bowie's repertoire.

The final three tracks are pleasant but they unfortunately fail to shed any new light on the mystery behind this album's great reception. Luckily, things would get a whole lot better with the release of "Heroes". To me, Low is competent album but it falls short whenever I compare it to both its predecessor and especially the next album!

**** star songs: Speed Of Life (2:47) Breaking Glass (1:53) What In The World (2:23) Sound And Vision (3:03) Be My Wife (2:57) Warszawa (6:24) Art Decade (3:47) Weeping Wall (3:28) Subterraneans (5:41)

*** star songs: Always Crashing In The Same Car (3:34) A New Career In A New Town (2:53)