'77'S ALBUM HEROES
In a year when Stranglers'
"No More Heroes" has crystallized the new wave attitude towards
rock stardom, "Heroes" is a title that seems
not merely ironic but even defiant; and yet its chart success just confirms
the public's continuing fascination with David Bowie, however great the
changes in fashion have been.
No other rock artist in the
seventies has been as volatile in his modus operandi.
From the plangent heavy metal
of "The Man Who Sold The World" to the
theatrically conceived rockmusic of "Ziggy Stardust"
and "Aladdin Sane" and on to the metallic
disco sound of "Young Americans" and "Station
To Station," he has always shown considerable inventiveness
in his treatment of one recurring theme: the chilly, psychological
crack-ups of modern, technological society - a leitmotif which helps
explain why Bowie often seems vulnerable but seldom warm.
The constant image mongering
of his career has tended to deflect this seriousness, but both "Heroes"
and "Low," which was released at the beginning of
this year, have now established a new view of Bowie as an artist who is
still willing to take risks but is more mature and sure of his intentions
and effects.
Drawing upon an interest in
electronic "mood" music, and especially the work of Brian
Eno and Kraftwerk, he has devoted almost half of each album
to instrumentals that bow towards Eno's theories of Muzak and utilize his
synthesizer playing.
The other half relies more
conventionally on a heavy disco beat fashioned by the rhythm team of Carlos
Alomar on guitar, George Murray on
bass and Dennis Davis on percussion which has been
with him since "Station To Station"
Where the mood of "Low"
was bleak and its songs fragmented, "Heroes"
is a rounded, fully-developed work which yet communicates its predecessor's
powerful unease.
A thoroughly contemporary
record in its links with European avant-garde rock, it is further evidence
of Bowie's genius for dramatizing the more controlled experiments of others
as well as for seizing the real artistic mood of the times.
MELODY MAKER 17 December 1977