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Karen Dalton
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Let It Roll: The Best of George Harrison
George Harrison
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David Bowie
1976 was not a banner year for rock and roll. Few artists were at the top of their game, and most were wallowing in some type of pre-disco morass, searching out the next trend to enhance their style. Bowie was no different, really. He had abandoned Ziggy for the Thin White Duke, but knew that the off-the-rack image he was promoting needed to be tweaked somewhat. Station to Station exemplifies “the return of the thin white duke” (It’s actually the very first lyric that Bowie sings here, on the title song) but with a radical return to his artful tendencies.
Every song on this album (there are only six) is remarkable in its own way. The leadoff title track takes forever to build up, then launches into overdrive trance rock, as if it were carrying you to another place. “Golden Years” and “Word On a Wing” are both exquisitely arranged, with the former being the most suggestive of Bowie’s Young Americans phase. “TVC15” is perhaps the album’s best track, though, with a wavery piano riff that sounds as futuristic as the novel extra-sensory device suggested by the title. It’s pure fun and fantasy, and it segues beautifully into the robust, hearty funk riff of “Stay” To end the album, Bowie is brave enough to cover a ballad that was once made famous by Johnny Mathis. He reinvents “Wild Is the Wind” until it becomes his own, proving that in 1976, Bowie was less concerned with what everyone was doing, and he was creating a futuristic, spatial niche that would become a perfect fit with pre-punk experimentalism.
Grade: 
 
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