While it’s part two in David Bowie (and Brian Eno)’s famed Berlin Trilogy, “Heroes” is the only record of the three recorded entirely in Berlin. And Bowie, now free of L.A. and the cocaine-ridden nights it brought him, is much more upbeat here than on Low.
The songs/instrumentals side division is the same as Low, but the songs on side A (and the one on side B) are much more accessible, and fully formed than on Low, and often flirts with full fledged rock songs.
Opener “Beauty and the Beast” is classic Bowie, putting function and fashion on equal footing, crooning juxtaposing lines of nonsense (someone catch a priest/you can’t say no to the beauty and the beast) over a rush of drums and electric guitars and a dominant synth. “Joe the Lion” features more prominent electric guitar than anything since Aladdin Sane, though played in chaotic multitracked melody lines rather than the heavy riffs of Ziggy Stardust.
Side A’s highest point is the anthemic, droning love song that is the title track which birthed shoegaze almost a full decade before My Bloody Valentine even formed (though it was composed in adoration of Neu! and probably would have reminded listeners at the time of Faust). It’s a six-minute, life-affirming number about love in the Cold War and two lovers who cross the Berlin Wall to be together, perfectly accented by Bowie’s octave-jumping delivery, in which he wails like he hasn’t wailed since Space Oddity’s “Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed.”
“Sons of the Silent Age” takes that wail and makes it a mournful, alien lament offset with doomy saxophones. Blackout pounds hard on the toms as electric guitars wah and feedback over the staccato piano chords and David Bowie spits lyrics more frantically than ever.
The instrumentals are nowhere near as somber as Low’s (though “Sense of Doubt” comes close). “V-2 Schneider” (a shout out to Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider) features a straight motorik beat, complete with vocoder filtered vocals. “Moss Garden” experiments heavily with Asian motifs, even utilizing a Koto over an ambient synth track that has Brian Eno written all over it.
“Neukoln” blends Eno’s droning organ with Bowie’s blaring, Coltrane-inspired saxophone lines, creating a track somewhere between ambient and free-jazz. The record closes with “The Secret Life of Arabia,” which with its disco soul is the first tie to his past discography the Berlin Trilogy makes.
When it comes down to it, it’s hard to listen to Low without hearing it as a sketch for “Heroes.” “Heroes” streamlines the angular rock of Low’s A side, and fleshes out the dirgy atmospheres of its predecessor in favor of more emotive and fully formed atmospheres. And, despite my not hearing Lodgers after reading too many disparaging reviews, I don’t think it’s foolish to claim “Heroes” as the high point of the Berlin Trilogy, and one of Bowie’s best albums of his entire catalogue.