251 - David Bowie - Low

This really should be considered very much a collaborative album with Brian Eno and not just a Bowie solo album. There are instrumental pieces written for a movie David was in (but were rejected by the movie maker), short pop songs, highly distorted instruments, plenty of synths, and an other-worldly feel that saturates the album from the cover to the very core. He seemed to have put the alien persona behind him, but his music seemed more out of this world than ever before.

There are bands that spend much of their discographies with songs that are variations of a single song on this album. Each instrumental seems to have inspired a different 4AD artist from the 90's. "What in the World" covers the early Talking Heads, while "Sound and Vision" covers the second half (if you add a pinch of Afrobeat).

A sense of incompleteness holds the album back for me. There are "instrumental" songs with a little bit of vocals in them that sound like David ran out of time before he could flesh out the lyrics. It takes what could be a landmark album and turns it into a good album.

The other Bowie albums I've come across on the list, I've enjoyed, but this is the first one that I'm really itching to buy a copy.

Songs I knew I liked: None

Songs I didn't know but now like: "Speed of Life," "What in the World," "Warszawa," "Art Decade," and "Subterraneans"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: None