Whatever your preferred phase, if you even have one, David Bowie's mainstream career is pretty fascinating, and for fans who were around at the time (I guess), nicely consistent. Releasing an album every year but two from his optimistic, folky debut to the electronic minimalism of his Berlin detox, Bowie's discography chronicles the rise and rise and permanent fame of the singing star and the evolution of his music as he travelled the world and absorbed its various flavours and drugs.

Having long abandoned the excessive showmanship of his rock hero era, the atmosphere of 'Station to Station,' reflected in the subsequent world tour, is bleak and disordered, but comfortingly smooth thanks to Bowie's deep croon. The Thin White Duke is a far cry from Ziggy Stardust and all the other song characters Bowie chose to identify with, and is a fair representation of his drug-induced wasting and detachment from the world, which has been much chronicled. A scary skeletal figure in smart attire with an important-sounding title, the Duke is a symbol that I would obviously be drawn towards, what with my unhealthy lifelong Grim Reaper fixation. See, I can be shallow too, only in different and disturbing ways. Performing with Bowie is his unmemorable but stable late seventies line-up led by the similarly important-sounding Earl Slick (though I suspect, unlike Bowie's Duke, that Earl is merely his Christian name), whose contributions as lead guitarist never approach those of his predecessor Mick Ronson, but still add enough individuality to keep this from being a Bowie ego project. Roy Bittan, recruited from Bruce Springsteen's band, contributes some distinctive piano and synthesiser effects that lend this album its unique sound, while George Murray, Dennis Davis and Carlos Alomar provide necessary but unremarkable bass, drums and back-up guitar in that order.

Partly because of its eccentric oddness, I have long considered this among my favourite Bowie albums, though it tends to fall quite far down the list once I start thinking about it. There are only six songs, one of which is a cover song and almost all of which are far longer than necessary, but fortunately Bowie's accumulated diversity of styles makes them all distinctive and easy to remember. There's no real consistency through this album, from the disorderly sound effects and studio trickery of the first few minutes to the unpredictable high wails and deep croons that alternate on the choruses, but it's all been arranged in the most satisfying fashion possible. 'Golden Years' was the obvious choice for a first single, the only song to restrict itself to a mere four minutes and retaining the inoffensive soul pop sound of the last album, but performed in a much more downbeat way. Although the bassy swinging riff starts to get on my nerves a little as the song carries on, I enjoy the resurgence of Bowie's high-pitched madman voice in the chorus, which balances out the rumbles of the verses almost as if he's singing a duet with himself. The only deviation in this straightforward piece is the introduction of a Mediterranean-sounding guitar towards the end. Although 'Golden Years' is likely the song most people will be familiar with before approaching this album, its unadventurous style doesn't really sum up the rest of the album which, while not prog rock or anything so complex, demands a greater attention span and taste threshold.

'Word on a Wing' is another great song for Bowie's vocals, as he's really given the prominent position in this piano-led, semi-operatic number. He sounds positively like a girl in the highest notes of the chorus, which is excellent and again harks back to more exciting times, while the lower parts dismiss the listener's nostalgia by firmly grounding them in the present (by which I mean thirty-one years ago). Things change drastically for the insane and inane 'TVC 15,' a pointless but incessantly catchy rock and roll song more similar to Lou Reed than Bowie, with Roy Bittan playing the kind of piano you'd expect to find in an old saloon. I can't imagine Bowie standing still for this one, in fact I tend to imagine him bouncing off the walls, but it works perfectly to break up the sorrowful tone of the album, which returns in 'Stay.' This is the only song so far that sounds a little similar to what's come before, merely because the competition's greater, but sounds more based on funk, with a prominent bass line before the song builds up nicely to the early chorus. The whole song's repetitive, as usual, and far too long (it's notable that the 7" release was about half the length), but grooves along pleasantly enough that it's not too much of a problem. The final song is a strange but effective choice of a cover, originally performed by Johnny Mathis for the film of the same name before being reinterpreted by Nina Simone, whose version Bowie uses. It's an incredibly pleasant mellow piece, with combined acoustic and electric-that-sounds-acoustic guitar creating a great minimal atmosphere of harmony to counterpoint the disorder of the album's beginning.