Pale blinds, drawn all day.
If ever a song personified a mood personified a name, it is “Sound And Vision”, it is Low. I am sure everybody gets depressed, life has a way of bringing even the mightiest to their knees and that breaking of the spirit into the tense decay of the flesh and of the soul, that’s the realness of depression and the realness of “Sound And Vision”.
While the world took speed and rode punk rock in 1977, Bowie went to Berlin, cold turkey off the cocaine that fueled Station To Station’s paranoid manic delusions of desire, and rehabbed himself into oblivion The result was the sound of mental wounds, of sonic downers, of the lowness of life where life is so downward it becomes a struggle to live. This is depression the way “The Golden Age” by Beck is depression, only Bowie is more downward.
David (and Brian Eno, who never got any better) positions not a question but a thought: this is what might happen after you straighten up and you still can’t stand up. This is what happens, the enthralled brutal pathos of “Station to Station” is followed by the stationary horror of “Sound And Vision” where Bowie is waiting for the quiet lowness to pass him by. With nothing to do and nothing to say and the synth background ambient sounds gently tugging you downwards, Bowie whisper croons and ode to another, this time a question: “don’t you wonder sometimes….?”
In 1977, the world was spiraling out of control, it ain’t no summer in love, no it ain’t. It was the sound and time of punk and of disco and somewhere million miles from the latest fashion, Bowie had been too there too long and finally there caught up with him. And he came down to earth and crashed his own car.
Of course, that isn’t quite right. Surely, that much depression, the sense I’ve been feeling where I just want to do nothing: not write, not dwell, not listen to music, not go to shows: just lay in bed and brood about nothing, that sort of depression wouldn’t lend itself to anything very much and certainly not to recording one of the greatest albums of all time. The first side, right in the middle, “Sound” and Vision” followed by “Always Crashing In the Same car” is a template for indie electronic pop: they are both chased by dismay and lowness: that sense of eminent failure, of death: it sounds like something you listen to while the life force ebbs away. With “nothing to do and nothing to say”, Bowie knows where he is but where he is is nowhere. This isn’t ambience like Music For Airports was ambience, this is ambience as in unsheltered but unstirred mood music.
I am not sure if I should recommend it for the chronically depressed. It offers nothing approaching solace, “Sound And Vision” enters in mid thought, and then drifts till it ends. It isn’t taking you anywhere in particular, it doesn’t belong to any one in particular. It is just there and it has nowhere to go or lead or be lead. This is as far away from the livingness of “Kooks” as you can imagine. It is a drift that can barely lift its head into an oblivion. And oblivion is less inviting and more inevitable, Bowie is not laid back he is dulled out, he is a dull turned off inanimate blue.
“Sound And vision” isn’t the depression of a life destroyed by disaster or tragedy but a life dwindling and inert where all effort has been made, success has been reached, and still it drifts into solitary confinement.
Waiting, waiting, waiting but it never arrives.
