David Bowie: Station to Station (2017 remaster) [PARLOPHONE]

Why you'll love it

This Parlophone LP carries the new remaster on 180g vinyl, with a large credits insert and a replica of the original die-cut paper inner sleeve. Station to Station reached No. 3 in the US and gave Bowie the top-ten hit "Golden Years."

This edition

• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Replica die-cut inner sleeve
• Credits insert
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in Germany

About the album

It opens with the sound of a train rumbling across the speakers, which is a bold way to start any record. Bowie made Station to Station at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles in late 1975, co-producing with Harry Maslin and introducing the Thin White Duke, the elegant, ice-cool character who sings these songs.

The band he built here, Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick on guitars, George Murray on bass and Dennis Davis on drums, with Roy Bittan of the E Street Band on piano, fused funk and soul with a cool, mechanical pulse. The ten-minute title track changes gear halfway through, "Stay" is a guitar-funk workout, "Word On A Wing" is a hymn, and his reading of Dimitri Tiomkin's "Wild Is The Wind," a song he loved in Nina Simone's version, closes the album.

It's often heard as the bridge between his soul years and the Berlin albums that followed, and this 2016 remaster first appeared in the Who Can I Be Now? box set. The cover shot comes from The Man Who Fell to Earth, so the sleeve doubles as a film still, which is admirably efficient of him.

Also at Kops: more David Bowie on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On RCA / Parlophone (cat# DB 74766), a reissue of the 1976 album.