David Bowie – Heathen

Heaten : of people or their way of life, activities, and ideas) having no religion, or belonging to a religion that is not Christianity, Judaism, or Islam

About this record David Bowie was quoted to say in an interview : "Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I'm referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man. However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums."

this was supposed to be a comeback record. a comeback from what? one of the most interesting periods of his career? i think it's more accurate to look at this as the second disc in his last trilogy, a trilogy that began with "hours..." and was characterized by an attempt to recapture a certain sound from the mid to late 70s. he even brings back visconti...

this was indeed marketed as a retro disc, so i'm not making that up. yet, the disc also has covers by the pixies, neil young and legendary stardust cowboy. this is an eclectic mix; surprisingly, only the third of the three is listenable, which may be reducible to the reality that it's the only one of the three tracks that i'm not familiar with. if cactus wasn't lame enough to begin with, there's something downright wrong about a 55 year old male singing a panty-raid song; the neil young track is just unsettling coming from bowie and it's hard to grasp what the thought process was. the legendary stardust cowboy track is teched up in the style of something from earthling and works for the same reason as the material from that disc worked; it stands out as an "electronica" track due it's high level of detail and production.

as you can see by taking a look at the credits, the instrumentation on the disc is very thick. it's not always utilized as well as it could be, and this is largely what separates the other tracks that i've crossed out from the ones that i've kept. the strings are utilized in the way that they are generally used in rock music: to appeal to the listener's sense of emotion, and while it works you have to suspend your thoughts first and allow yourself to be manipulated.

the first track opens the disc on a dark, moody note with an "angular" guitar track that strongly recalls robert fripp; these were always the best bowie tracks, and it is the highlight of this disc, apparently exploring dual commentaries regarding the rather profound political events that occurred between the release of hours... and the release of this disc; nothing has changed and everything has changed. this is a very typical take on politics from bowie, a view that strongly characterized his best discs and strongly characterizes this one as well. again, there's no point in discussing this because enough has been written about it and everybody knows that the main theme running through bowie's back catalogue is apathy towards world events and paranoia of the coming bombs. it leads to a rational conclusion: if the bombs are only months away anyways, why torture ourselves with the absurdity of modern life? why work all day to pay the motherfuckers? why not just fuck it all and dance......while we still can....

while this theme dominates, the title of the disc is "heathen" and there's also a religious theme through several of the tracks: afraid slightly sarcastically explores some alternatives to filling the psychological hole left by the rejection of a deity, whereas i would be your slave strikes me as the kind of defence of atheism that comes about after somebody has spent all night trying to convert you and heathen, ittedly, has lost me altogether, unless it's a commentary on byzantinism, which, while topical given the precise word "heathen", strikes me as rather preposterous.

i don't really recommend this as a standalone record; if you want retro bowie then search out retro bowie. however, there's enough decent material on it to justify adding it to any pre-existing bowie collection.