Greatest album ever made? Quite possibly. There's definitely a sense that in popular music there was Pre-Pepper and Post-Pepper. My dad was a musician at the time and he said when it came out everyone in his local scene said, "Well, we might as well all go home now!" 😆
It's absolutely brilliant from start to finish, and that opening track still absolutely smacks you round the head. "She's Leaving Home" used to scare and sadden me as a child but I couldn't stop listening to it. Still can't.
Masterpiece.
Stuart Maconie put it best when he said that even 45 years on, Low still sounds like music from the future. Tremendous. Even with the saxophone in Subterraneans. I always feel that Bowie's sax playing is the price we have to pay for the rest of his wonderful music.
Favourite tracks: Speed of Life, Breaking Glass, Warsazwa and Art Decade
Incidentally, as I always say with Bowie, let's not forget the crucial input of his collaborators, including Brian Eno, Tony Visconti, George Murray, Dennis Davis and Carlos Alomar.
There's a lot of great stuff on here if it's your thing... but on the whole it's just not my thing, and unfortunately I don't know enough context to understand or appreciate why it was so big at the time.
Some interesting and unexpected bits and pieces; cracking musicians - especially Ian Paice; and I'll take this over most of the polished American hair metal that this would eventually mutate into... but I'd much rather be listening to Fire And Water by Free from two years earlier.
This album is so 1996 it hurts.
I'd never listened to it before, but recognised "Novocaine for the Soul" and "Susan's House" when the choruses kicked in because those buggers were *everywhere* for a while.
A lot of really cool sounds and production choices. It's just a shame that the Gen-X try-hard misanthropy of Mark Oliver Everett's lyrics gets old very quickly!
Full disclosure: I've always hated Morrissey. His voice, his stage persona... I hated him before he became a weird British Nationalist and it was fashionable to hate him. He is, as the classic Viz article so perfectly put it, a twat.
And because bands tend to be overshadowed by the primacy of their singers (thanks, 1942-1944 musicians' strike!), I've always avoided The Smiths.
So imagine how gutted I was to find that in amongst the pretentious delivery, the tedious songwriting that makes a 3 minute song feel like 6, and Morrissey's godawful yawning voice... not only is there some really interesting arrangement and production work, but some of Morrissey's lyrics aren't actually that bad. "I Know It's Over," for example, is excellent. And Johnny Marr's guitar work on "Bigmouth Strikes Again" was another standout.
"Cemetery Gates," however, is reassuringly awful. And "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out," made me want to put my foot through the computer screen and send Spotify the bill.
So I'm glad I've finally listened to some Smiths, and have a little more idea of what the appeal is. But I hope I never have to hear any of this wank again.
This sort of thing really isn't my cup of tea - I've always found it really bland - but there are some interesting arrangements going on (I especially liked Frankie's First Affair), and you can hear the link between 70s disco soul and 90s neo-soul. I'd rather be listening to Rufus and Chaka Khan, though.
How can three such unpleasant people* people produce such lovely sounds? I guess that sums up rather a lot of the hippy movement, really!
My first time listening to this album, and you can really hear the influence on 70s Fleetwood Mac, Yes, etc. Some of it hasn't aged particularly well - for example, Marrakesh Express is a bit twee; Lady of the Island is hopelessly pretentious... but Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and Guinnevere in particular are splendid.
*OK, maybe Graham Nash isn't quite the arsehole the other two are.
In music, there's never a true "First" anything. So while there are plenty of people claiming this is The First Heavy Metal album, there are plenty of other albums that could also lay claim to the title.
However, there's no denying that Blue Cheer's cover of Eddie Cochrane's Summertime Blues has something that not many other people were doing in 1968! Doctor Please does some interesting things musically if not lyrically, and Second Time Around has an almost Stooges-like sound to it at times.
Not one I'll be bopping along to, but an interesting historical curiosity!
