While I have been impressed and inspired by Bowie for years, I have to admit that I can't truly consider myself a *huge* fan because I only have several of his albums - most being from the last ten years (_Outside_, _Earthling_, _Reality_, etc.). His work from the 60s, 70s, and 80s I know primarily from a best-of collection, radio, and MTV/VH1. That said, _Heathen_ blew me away when I first heard it.

I can't think of another artist that has been around as long as Bowie that keeps writing and recording new material that sounds fresh, energetic, and urgent. _Heathen_ contains some chilling songs - songs that are so emotional and hit you in such a place inside that you have to listen to them over and over again. When he sings: "There's fear overhead, there's fear overground..." and "But who are we/So small in times such as these," one cannot help but think that these lyrics relate to 9/11. However, Bowie has stated that the material for _Heathen_ was written before 9/11 - which actually makes the lyrics throughout the album even more bonechilling. On "Better Future" he sings: "Please don't tear this world asunder/Please take back this fear we're under/I demand a better future." There are beautiful lyrics like these throughout _Heathen_, as well as very good covers of "Cactus" and Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting For You." My favorite song on the album is "Everyone Says 'Hi'" - just about as perfect as a little pop song can get. With a simple arrangement, the song is a beautiful sentiment with the line that we should all make it a point to remember: "Don't stay in a sad place where they don't care how you are."

Listening to this album made me really wonder if any other artist in their 40s and 50s has remained as artistically satisfying as Bowie continues to prove he is. Bowie has not softened with age and each song has the feeling that he is out to prove something. Many artists lose this feeling as they get older and begin to coast on proven formulas (Sting immediately comes to mind). Pick this album up!

"Heathen" is an all-around amazing album. But I will say that if you only like one or two of David Bowie's albums, and aren't really a Bowie fan, then you probably won't like it, since this album is sort of quintessential Bowie. (One consequence of Bowie's huge range of musical styles is that certain albums which are different from everything else he's done--such as "Outside"--have picked up some fans who are only fans of that album and disparage all his other work.)
Most actual Bowie fans will adore this album, since it's a mixture of many of his older sounds (for example, "Slip Away" sounds almost like a sequel to"Life on Mars"), so it feels very familiar, while having a completely new sound as well. The cover songs are fantastic (one little note about the covers: I think people might appreciate the rather goofy song "Gemini Spacecraft" better if they heard the even goofier original version by Legendary Stardust Cowboy... this song is NOT meant to be taken seriously!!). However, I think Bowie's own songs are the best on the album. "I Would Be Your Slave" and "5:15 the Angels Have Gone" are stunningly beautiful-- they are two of my favorite Bowie songs ever, which is saying a lot. My other favorite songs on the album are "Afraid", "Everyone Says Hi" and "Heathen (the Rays)". "Sunday" has been the the most challenging song for me; it's slow and meanders in an almost classical-music kind of way, and bored me a little at first, but I love it now. There is no bad song on the album, and every song is completely different, so there is something for everyone (everyone who is a Bowie fan anyway), or for any mood you find yourself in.
The edition with the bonus CD is definitely worth getting. Moby's mix of "Sunday" is even better than the original, Air does a great remix of "Better Future", there is a rocking version of "Panic in Detroit", and I've always loved "Conversation Piece" (a B-side from Space Oddity) so I was happy to hear him do the new rendition of it, which I think is really lovely.

it seems with every new release, some one's bound to say, "he's back"! OUTSIDE & EARTHLING each had things to commend them but overall don't live up to his classic years. Both were certainly better than the lackluster "hours..." But now I can say it. He's back. HEATHEN is his best album in 22 years.


"Sunday" starts things off with Bowie doing his very best Scott Walker on a gloomy day. "Slip Away" keeps the mood going, with our man in Pink Floyd mode, a fact he seems to acknowlege with the line, "Twinkle, twinkle Uncle Floyd".

Pete Townshend out does himself on "Slow Burn" which for my money is the best cut on the album. Die hard fans will recall his last outing with Bowie off of 1980's SCARY MONSTERS. But "Slow Burn" is far more deserving of classic status than "Because You're Young". Lyrically, musically, vocally everything is on fire.

As for the 3 covers on here, originals would be more welcome but I think he does a great job with each of them. Pixies purists might roll their eyes at Bowie tackling "Cactus" but even after the first listen, I was won over. Where Black Francis sounded possessed, Bowie sounds obssessed.

I have to confess I cringed at the idea of a Neil Young cover, but "I've Been Waiting For You" is as sweepingly melodramatic as anything off of STATION TO STATION. It's all search lights and helicopters, with Dave Grohl's guitar driving it all home.

The most obscure cover is "Gemini Spaceship" and though I've never heard The Legendary Stardust Cowboy's original, it's as much Bowie's own as the moniker he swiped. The lyrics sound like an outtake from ZIGGY STARDUST but musically, it's a compendium of everything he's dabbled in since OUTSIDE.

As for the rest of the album, "Afraid" features some pretty hypnotic guitars and it's nice to know that unlike the late John Lennon, Bowie still "Believes in Beatles". "I Would Be Your Slave" , "5:15..." and "Better Future" are less likely to grab you at first, but at the risk of making a pun, I'd say they're "slow burners", revealing themselves after repeated listens.

Along with "Slow Burn", the other major standout here is "Everybody Says 'Hi'", easily one of the catchiest numbers Bowie's written since, "Modern Love". A nice break from what is essentially a fairly brooding album.

Bowie has since released REALITY, which with the exception of "Lonliest Guy" & "Disco King" doesn't equal or top the likes of this. For new fans, peeking round the corner beyond SCARY MONSTERS, this is the one to get.

Everyone knows the conventional version of the Bowie story: pop genius of the Seventies falls into forgettable stadium rock during the Eighties and then desperately tries to sound hip again over the Nineties. What has been missed however is the subtle renaissance that has occurred in his music over the last few years; indeed one day the impressive and diverse body of work he has created over the past decade may come to be seen as a second golden period. And HEATHEN is where it all comes together; the successful elements of his recent work are retained, while the overt attempts at sounding cool are discarded. Mix this with a musical homage to Bowie's own glorious past, and suddenly he sounds modern, relevant, and, well...really very good!

From the first notes we are warned: this is going to be a complex, at times difficult, but ultimately rewarding album. "Sunday", the opening track, is immediately reminiscent of 1995's OUTSIDE, with its discordant vocals and dense music. On that earlier album Bowie re-discovered the unconventionality and adventure of his Seventies peak, but loaded it with too many semi-complete ideas. HEATHEN, by contrast, is a cohesive whole with more shape to it, and knowledge of where it is going. Gone is the annoying linking concept; instead this album holds together through it's focus on themes of dislocation, loss, age, love, family, faith - in short, the issues that define the human struggle in life. Although these often sombre lyrical themes are present in the musical rendering of the songs too, they by no means confine the album to gloomy introspection. Often the songs rise to inspitational heights of beauty. And this album is never short of energy and vigour. For example "Sunday", which almost as it finishes suddenly takes off as the drums kick in, ushering us into the rest of the album.

This tempo is built on with a cover of The Pixies "Cactus" that sounds like Bowie probably wished he had sounded back when that band first recorded it. The Bowie take exudes the prickly intensity of his last really great work, 1980's SCARY MONSTERS album. And next we are treated to possibly Bowie's best work since then. "Slip Away" is beautiful and yearning, sad and majestic, with a typically abstract lyric and vocals reminiscent of the HUNKY DORY era. One of the albums best tracks, it holds it's own against any other song in the Bowie canon. "Slow Burn" meanwhile is all yearning guitars and thumping bass in a re-working of "Heroes" and "Strangers When We Meet" (the latter from the criminally underrated 1993 album THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA - the moment Bowie started getting it right again). It is perhaps the centrepiece of this album, a beautifully grand song with a fantastic vocal performance from Bowie. And perhaps the highest praise of this album is that both these songs could not have been recorded by the Bowie of the past; they display the experience of an older, wiser man - and yet they are in no way jaded. Make no mistake; this is Bowie at his very best.

In the middle of the album are a series of songs that demonstrate how well Bowie has learned to hold onto and build on his recent successes while discarding the mistakes. The cover of Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting For You" is an aggressively bass driven track supported by wonderful walls of guitar. This is how TIN MACHINE almost sounded in the moments when they got it right - but this is far, far better. Meanwhile the wonderful "I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spaceship" uses the electronic beats that Bowie started experimenting with in the Nineties while remembering not to repeat the sub-Drum & Bass failures of 1997's Earthling album. This time Bowie sounds like himself, making records in 2002, not a has-been trying to jump on the bandwagon. Not an original composition, Bowie nevertheless turns this into a lovely homage to the ZIGGY STARDUST era, just going far enough to sound campishly Glam without being pompous. Following on in this vein is the gorgeous "Everyone Says Hi", which is early Seventies era Bowie (circa ALADDIN SANE) via Suede and Pulp, and would surely be a hit as a single.

The title track, which closes the album in magnificent style, brings everything together. It is reminiscent of Low with its deep groaning music, snappy drums and grand orchestral backing. Indeed at one point it sounds as though it is about the morph into that album's great track "Warszawa". And yet it in no way sounds dated. There are too many echoes of recent work for that. This is old and new all at once, and in that way summarizes the whole album.

Bowie has been openly referencing his own past since 1993, perhaps in an attempt to re-capture something of it's magic (note the luminaries from his past with whom he has recently collaborated again - Nile Rogers, Brian Eno and now Visconti). And HEATHEN is no exception, although this time he draws equally from the success of his more recent work: it has the introspection of LOW and the edginess of SCARY MONSTERS; the pop sensibility of ALADDIN SANE and the understated grace of HOURS; the uncomfortable inventiveness of LODGER and the frightening density of OUTSIDE. This album works through the distant past and the recent past coming together to form something new and exciting. For the first time Bowie no longer sounds in awe of his Seventies self. Indeed, HEATHEN is more inspired by, than a reproduction of, Bowie's golden years. It is about then through the prism of now, rather than the nostalgic attempt to turn now into then. And in that way it sounds forward looking, modern and relevant. Music for tomorrow indeed.

This album is bold, challenging and exciting. If you ever liked Bowie, or if you just like music that demands intelligence, then buy this album!

David Bowie fans may or may not rejoice with David Bowie's new release, "Heathen". Taken as a whole, it would seem Bowie's most consisten work in years. Three cover songs, "Cactus", "I've Been Waiting For You" and "I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spaceship" and nine originals that all sound fresh and vibrant. Gone are the noodlings from 1999's "Hours...", 1997's "Earthling", 1995's "Outside" and 1993's "Black Tie White Noise". Of the nine originals, stand out tracks include "Sunday", "Slow Burn", "5:15 The Angels Have Gone", ,"Everyone Says 'Hi'", "A Better Future" and "Heathen (The Rays)". Consistent, with good hooks would best capitulate "Heathen". Those who had written Bowie off as having little more to offer, with his most creative days behind him, can now take notice. If it takes Tony Visconti to bring Bowie back into focus, here's to more collaborations!