In the Low volume, Wilcken does a very solid job of establishing the context from which Low sprung — Bowie's drug-addled, near-catatonic mental state at the outset of recording, his family history of mental illness, collaborators like Brian Eno and Tony Visconti, Kraftwerk and other angular music that influenced him, the artistic scene of mid-70s Berlin, and all the other little pieces that created this unusual album. Bowie, the noted chameleon, strips away his masks throughout Low, and the album shows the deterioration of language as a medium of communication. Only about half the songs even have lyrics, although they're among Bowie's strongest — the bouncy "Sound And Vision," yearning "Be My Wife," world-weary "Always Crashing The Same Car" — but words fade and the entire second side is instrumental. By the great "Warszawa," Bowie has crumbled into an imaginary language that predicts the music of a modern band like Sigür Rös by decades.
Low is one of those rare records that's only grown in power and reputation over the decades. A world used to Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke didn't know what to make of this crystalline, lonesome Bowie sound. (Wilcken uses the word "autistic" to frequently describe Bowie's behavior in this disc, which may sound inappropriate but really sums up the transformation of the Bowie character during the song cycle.) Wilcken's Low book meets the magic benchmark of music criticism for me — it gives me new appreciation for an album I already deeply loved. If you're a fan of enterprising, long-form music criticism, these 33 1/3 books are well worth a shot. Pick one about an album you dig and give it a spin.
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