Album Rating: B+
Audio Ratings (SACD 5.1/2.0): A/A-
Extras Rating: B+ (see details below)
Specs and Features
72 mins, single-sided, single-layered, CD jewel case packaging with plastic slip-sleeve, liner notes booklet, 4 bonus songs not found on CD (When the Boys Come Marching Home, Wood Jackson, Conversation Piece and Safe), track access (16 tracks - see track listing below), audio formats: SACD DSD 5.1 & 2.0

Produced by David Bowie & Tony Visconti

With his new album, Heathen, David Bowie returns to his musical roots to a degree, crafting a release that both recalls the classic days of his Space Oddity and Heroes, and yet merges them with a new and more modern quality as well - a musical sensibility that seems delightfully older and wiser for its years.

Guest artists here include The Who's Pete Townshend, Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters and Nirvana fame and session player Tony Levin, a long-time Peter Gabriel collaborator. Each adds their own unique contribution to the mix. And Bowie has reunited for this album with producer Tony Visconti, who served in the same capacity for many of his best LPs, including Scary Monsters.

Bowie has chosen to cover an eclectic batch of songs for this album (the Pixies' Cactus, Neil Young's I've Been Waiting for You and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy's I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship). But as good as the covers are, the highlights are all Bowie's, including the soulful I Would Be Your Slave, the melancholy longing of 5:15 The Angels Have Gone and the soaring Everyone Says 'Hi', which can best be described as a glittering and lazy afternoon flight through the stratosphere. The cumulative result is, by turns, electronically creepy, ethereal, lonely, haunting and always uniquely Bowie.

In terms of sonic quality, Heathen is the sort of album that gets under your skin, shimmies up your spine and infuses your brain with delight. Thankfully, both mixes included on this SACD deliver in top form. The 2.0 stereo mix is smooth, clean and well blended, and is very playful. The 5.1 surround mix feels simply like an extension of the stereo presentation, where the extreme left and right portions of the soundstage have been stretched out around and behind the listener. And the surround mix is nicely immersive, rather than degenerating into the sort of annoying, head-turning exercise that so often ruins the 5.1 experience. Here, the surrounds deliver subtle percussion, backing vocals and atmospheric electronic tones. Both mixes have a very natural, organic quality about them. And the transparency of DSD mastering, combined with the richness of SACD's superior resolution, allows for completely easy enjoyment of the music.

Interestingly, this is a rare case where I actually prefer the 5.1 mix. Music like Bowie's has an experiential quality that very much lends itself to surround presentation. And since this album is a new release, it's much easier to accept a surround mix than it would be on one of his classic releases.

Heathen comes in a standard CD jewel case, with the usual plastic slipcover that identifies the disc as an SACD and tells you it contains both stereo and multi-channel audio options. You also get four bonus songs (mixed in both 5.1 and 2.0) that were recorded for the Heathen album but were omitted from the standard CD release. That's a pretty nice reward for high-resolution fans.

As someone whose musical tastes came of age in the early 80s, I really love it when these old guys show today's younger musicians what's what. Like Peter Gabriel with Up and Elvis Costello' with When I Was Cruel, David Bowie proves with Heathen that his musical talents are still as vital and relevant as ever. And let me tell you, if you haven't heard Heathen in high-resolution... you haven't heard it at all. This is probably my favorite SACD release to date. Highly recommended.

Finally binning the zeitgeist-mounting personas that have both defined and haunted his career, Bowie's 25th studio album sees our original friend electric embark upon a largely unaffected anniversary waltz through the velvet-lined vaults of his past. And it's great. All of it. Even the bits where the grand old duchess of dilettantism succumbs to nursery-rhyme whimsy (the 'Space Oddity'-ish 'Slip Away') and (especially) the bits where spooky synths drop by for a chinwag (the 'Low'-flavoured 'Sunday'). Why? Because even at his most self-referential, Bowie is still a zillion times more inventive, brave and rocket-to-Mars brilliant than anyone who's been prodded by the ubiquitous genius stick, like, ever. 55 and not out, Bowie remains rock's most worship-worthy oddity. Rating: 8

By curating this year's Meltdown festival at London's South Bank Centre - a role previously filled by Nick Cave, Scott Walker and John Peel - David Bowie is asserting himself as an influential artist. The release of new album Heathen, Bowie's first in three years, marks an important crossroads for him as he makes a concerted effort to transform from mere musician of note into musical godfather. The album features guests Pete Townsend and Dave Grohl, and cover versions of songs by The Pixies and Neil Young. The producer is Tony Visconti, arguably the best of all Bowie producers, clearly on hand to help rekindle the good times.

....Bowie's songwriting on Heathen is generally solid, if rarely groundbreaking, and just about always manages to deliver the goods.......While 5.15 The Angels Have Gone might be what you would end up with if you put Enya together with Julio Iglesias and is, for the most part, one to skip. But Bowie's songwriting on Heathen is generally solid, if rarely groundbreaking, and just about always manages to deliver the goods. It is the work of a musician talented enough to recognise his own deficiencies and to know who to draft in to cover them up. On this evidence Bowie is certainly not past it, and with Heathen he suggests that we're some way from hearing the last of him. David Bowie - Heathen (ISO Records, June 10 2002)

The most immediate pleasures on Heathen are all covers. David Bowie has exquisitely hip taste, and he attacks the Pixies' "Cactus," Neil Young's '69 ruby "I've Been Waiting for You" and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy's sci-fi valentine "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship" with the same sharp-dressed zest that he brought to the Easybeats and Pretty Things hits on 1973's Pin Ups. The rest of Heathen is the sound of Bowie essentially covering himself -- to splendid, often moving effect.

....The album sparkles with hindsight: the Low-like electrofrost of "Sunday"; the Martian-calliope coda of "Slip Away," played by Bowie on a Stylophone, the antique synth featured on 1969's "Space Oddity." In "Slow Burn," guest guitarist Pete Townsend channels Robert Fripp's cool signature riff from 1977's "Heroes" through Who's Next-style amp rage. And Bowie co-produced Heathen with Tony Visconti, the ears at the board for most of Bowie's best LPs from 1970 (The Man Who Sold the World) to 1980 (Scary Monsters). The poignancy is in the heartbeat audible beneath the old tricks. "I believe my little soul has grown," Bowie claims in "Afraid," a high-speed jolt of Hunky Dory-flavored strum and strings, and he seems to mean it.

....This is his least affected album in a decade, a relief after the overreach of 1995's Outside (operatic grunge) and '97's Earthling (watery jungle). Heathen is also Bowie stripped bare. His great concept roles -- Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke -- were all lost souls, trapped in space or circumstance. Bowie works here without masks, deepening the sultry gravity of his voice with open yearning in "Slip Away" ("Life on Mars?" reset in the nutty sweetness of the 1980s cult-TV hit The Uncle Floyd Show) and the icy waiting song "The Angels Have Gone." A loose theme runs through these songs, covers included: the search for guiding light in godless night. But the real story is Heathen's perfect casting: Bowie playing Bowie, with class. (RS 898 - June 20, 2002) Three and a Half stars (of four).

There was a time when each David Bowie album would herald the arrival of a new alter ego, one more colorful and outlandish than the one before it.Who can forget Ziggy Stardust, or the Thin White Duke, or the dapper blue-eyed soul man of the early 1980s? And who hasn't tried to forget the enormously coiffed crooner he morphed into for his 1987 "Glass Spider" album and tour? Or his fleeting but alarming quasi-Nazi image of the mid-'70s?

....For better, not worse, Bowie's arresting new album, "Heathen," relies primarily on its music -- not some eye-popping image -- to make its impact. Better yet, after having spent nearly all of the '90s trying to avoid even acknowledging his musical past, he now embraces it."I've totally changed horses," Bowie acknowledged, speaking from his Manhattan home. "I'm much more relaxed and comfortable, in that I know what to do now and what's fair to me and the public. Virtually everything I did in the '90s was a fresh page. It was good to jump in the deep end and locate myself in a place where the audience didn't know what I was doing."With "Heathen," Bowie has struck a neat balance between his wildly experimental inclinations and his ability to meld inviting melodies and thoughtful lyrics. ......

(06-11) 10:06 PDT (AP) -- Selected audio releases: "Heathen" (Columbia, $18.98) -- David Bowie Throughout his 35-year recording career, David Bowie has never stagnated, consistently absorbing new ideas. He continues that tradition with "Heathen," his latest release. On "Sunday," the opening song on the disc, the 55-year-old's theatrical baritone is as powerful as ever. Subtle electronics and strange, almost mournful chords slowly build to a dramatic drumbeat in the final minute of the song. It's exhilarating, but very serious sounding, as are most of the songs on "Heathen." Bowie creates wonderful and sophisticated sound textures with his string arrangements, which are dark and beautiful. The songwriting is profoundly modern on the sublime, elegant love song "I Would Be Your Slave," reminding listeners that Bowie is a poet. The lyrics are simple, yet, evocative. Bowie remains a master at this combination: hipness and artistic sensibility. *

Buried inside a new coffee-table book documenting the work of uberpaparazzo Ron Galella is a fascinating time-capsule photo of old-school rock elite. The shot, taken backstage at the Grammys in 1976, is a group huddle of Simon and Garfunkel, John and Yoko, and a vampire. Actually, the bloodsucker is David Bowie, who seems to be kicking off his well-documented period of drugs and excess in the most appropriate manner. The cheeks are bony and caved in, the skin looks like it could tear at any moment, and the foppish suit and hat can't hide the overall feel of youthful decay. He's like a party-hearty cadaver.

....On ''Heathen,'' Bowie longs to return to that period, minus the stimulants (the pasty face remains, of course). The album reunites him with Tony Visconti, the producer who worked on nearly every Bowie record between 1975's ''Young Americans'' and 1980's ''Scary Monsters.'' During that period, Bowie buried his Ziggy Stardust costume once and for all, and the two men (on the later work in particular) mixed haunted-house rock, streaking-comet noise, Europop, and brittle psyche, making for Bowie's most artistically fertile period. He didn't simply look like he was on the edge; he sounded that way as well. Bowie's reunion with Visconti is a risky move in a decade that's been filled with risks, most of which have failed, like his wan drum-and-bass collection, ''Earthling,'' or his reunion with another vintage collaborator, Brian Eno, on the stilted concept album ''Outside.'' But reconvening with his best-known producer is one strategy that actually works. Bowie always trips himself up when he goes hunting for hit singles, which he rarely did with Visconti and doesn't do here, either. ''Heathen'' is imbued with the same approach to shape-shifting sonic murk as that early period: Synthesizers burp and wheeze, percussion seems to echo somewhere in the distance, dark strings underscore the songs like musical Magic Markers, and Bowie abandons his occasional teatime hiccup for a deepened, reedy theatricality. The disc doesn't so much soar as whir somewhere above us. Raucous, optimistic, odd...

....The unsettling, and unsettled, arrangements turn out to be a fine match for songs that suggest a shaky, alien post-September 11 universe. Bowie, a downtown Manhattan resident, has said -- including in Entertainment Weekly -- that he wrote the material for ''Heathen'' before that catastrophic morning, which suggests he's either clairvoyant or just a generally nervous person. The tramping-monk shuffle, ''Sunday,'' the peeved ''A Better Future,'' and the more raucous ''Slow Burn'' are saturated with imagery of cities and lives in collapse, just as ''I Would Be Your Slave'' finds Bowie pledging allegiance to a god who can give him answers. The optimism of ''Afraid'' is cautious at best. The album's oddest song, ''Slip Away,'' is on one hand an affectionate ode to ''The Uncle Floyd Show,'' a lovably low-tech vaudeville TV series of the late '70s and early '80s. Thanks to its celestial arrangement, which at times suggests ''Space Oddity,'' it also feels like an elegy for an era when the worst thing imaginable was not having a big-enough antenna to view a cult TV show. ''Heathen'' isn't all shadows and blight. Bowie indulges in some Ziggy-period insouciance for a version of the Pixies' twisted love song ''Cactus'' and offers up a redundant take on Neil Young's slashing, underappreciated ''I've Been Waiting for You.'' But Bowie is also astute enough to realize that rocking out isn't what he does best anymore; he's better off aiming for a middle ground between art song and an intergalactic Tin Pan Alley, and that's where the best parts of ''Heathen'' lie. For all its appeal, there's something a little off about the album. Back in the late '70s, as that Ron Galella photo reminds us, Bowie was a genuine heathen, a premature symbol of end-of-the-century decadence. Twenty-plus years later, Bowie has left his creature features long behind. He's well-heeled rock gentry with a family and a sizable bank account; if there was a section in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for aristocracy, he'd be there. Starting with its cover, ''Heathen'' wants you to believe that the MTV careerist of the '80s and the businessman who sold shares in his back catalog to investors in the '90s are gone, and that Bowie is back to being Weird Fringe Guy. It's wishful thinking at best, a ridiculous conceit at worst. But the album allows Bowie to return to his eeriest character -- let's call it Grim Shady -- and it's still the best role of his life. Grade: B+

Wednesday, Jun. 12, 2002. David Bowie should think about starting a cover band. It's the only kind of self-transformation he hasn't tried yet, and the only two really good songs on his new album, Heathen (Columbia), are the covers. After 36 years in pop, Bowie still has the patience to build intriguing atmospheres around other people's melodies with synthesizers, guitar and dramatic vocals. And what he comes up with sounds fresh and unearthly. But his own melodies are about as inspired as gags on a David Spade sitcom.To be fair, Bowie's lyrics are clever, full of dread of the future and longing for escape. On Slip Away, he wistfully croons, "In space it's always 1982," referring to the peak of his popularity. But the music feels like a collection of eerie sound effects in search of a memorable tune to adorn. On the covers, Neil Young's I've Been Waiting for You and Cactus, a song by '80s post-punk band the Pixies, the futuristic soundscapes complement good, straightforward rock songs that provide what the album desperately needs: energy. Bowie's clothes have always matched his music: when he was an effete balladeer, he favored flowing dresses; when he sang soul, he wore sharp white shirts. Now he dresses for comfort, not spectacle, lounging around in agnes b. suits like a hip hedge-fund manager on casual Friday. His songwriting feels both off the rack and a bit sloppy. He needs to work harder on old-fashioned pop hooks and chords.Or he could just stick to his new forte, interpreting the work of others. How 'bout it, David? Layla!

Wow, after decades of everyone doing Bowie better than Bowie, Bowie is Bowie again. For Bowie fans, this is the album you never thought he had left in him.

...."Heathen" is vintage Davo. The album conjures up the best Bowie sounds from "Ziggy Stardust" to "Scary Monsters". This is incredible stuff. "Heathen" also marks the first album since leaving Virgin and starting his own label ISO. Often when an artist makes such a dramatic change it sparks a new lease of life and the creative juices have flowed back to Bowie.

....The old producer has also flowed back. Tony Visconti last worked with Bowie on Scary Monsters. That album featured Pete Townsend on guitar and Pete is back too. So is vintage Bowie sessions musos Carlos Alomar. The Thin White Duke has surrounded himself with people who both know and respect him and it has paid off. Foo Fighters Dave Grohl is also a celebrity inclusion.

...."Sunday" starts off dark, a very mellow way to launch a new sound but it does remind me of the Low era. "Cactus" is a fun uptempo Pixies cover. It starts with a 12 bar blues acoustic guitar intro before the band explodes in. It is not the last cover you will hear on this record. "Slip Away" throws me back to the track "Time" from Aladdin Sane crossed with "Space Oddity" and then "Slow Burn" is reminiscent of "Heroes".

...."Afraid" is an outright rocker. One of Bowie's collaborators in the 70s was John Lennon. They wrote Fame together. Lennon once sang on one of his songs "God" "I don't believe in Beatles". On "Afraid" Bowie sings "I believe in Beatles". It sounds like he is answering back to the Lennon paranoia on this track.

...."I've Been Waiting For You" is a Neil Young song also at one stage covered by The Pixies. Neil did it on his 1969 solo debut. The fact Bowie has already sung a Pixies song here makes you wonder if he is coming from the Neil perspective or that of the cover. "I Would Be Your Slave" is more recent in sound, fitting the format of the last few records Earthling and Hours and I mist admit "Gemini Spacecraft" fits the Earthling template pretty spot on. Bowie was experimenting with drum and bass at that time. It is good to see he hasn't totally abandoned what he learned from the last decade, he has just adapted it finally to his old sound. This is a cover of a Norman Carl Odam track.

...."5:15" is a huge Bowie electro ballad. "Everyone Says Hi" would be an interesting addition to Ziggy. "A Better Future" again brings back sounds of bygone Bowie eras, more so this time from the time of Diamond Dogs and the title track keeps with the moodiness of Heroes once again.

....It's Bowie in 2002 sounding fresh again. He mentioned The Beatles before on "Afraid". On the title track "Heathen" he has the lyric line "all things must pass". A borrow from the classic George Harrison album I wonder? I really don't know but there is a lot of classic about Heathen.

This is Major Tom to Ground Control: Get a therapist up here pronto. With song after song about lost love, this moody and melancholy CD has more departures than LaGuardia Airport. And more security worries: In the past Bowie has frequently taken dark lyrics and made them dance, but seldom has his work sounded so starkly apocalyptic. Bowie lives in New York City, which may explain why his mind is full of images of "steel on the skyline/ sky made of glass . . . I can see it now/ I can feel it die" and a plea to "please don't tear this world asunder . . . please make sure we get tomorrow." Warnings of blood, fear and fire appear against a disquieting backdrop of electronic effects and spacey keyboards, frequently with thrashing, grunge rhythm sections. Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl even crashes in with a heavy-metal guitar on one track. Only a few songs, such as the poignant, strings-laden "Everyone Says 'Hi,' " deploy Bowie's melodic gifts; otherwise, this is grim hard rock painted from a palette of black, blacker and blackest. Bottom Line: Ashes to ashes