Review by vonwegen September 9, 2010 (1 of 1 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics: |
I can recommend this disc--nice open sound, if bordering on overproduced. Nice dynamics, big bottom frequencies and a huge snare drum make this release quite possibly the quintessential 1980s recording.
But I do have some reservations: this is much more an ersatz Chic album than a Bowie one, albeit decorated with our first exposure to Stevie Ray Vaughn's lead guitar. The digitally-enhanced snare does get overpowering at times, (and even more so in this hi-rez format). It's most distracting on the opening song, "Modern Love", which is not a good tune to play on a Sunday morning when suffering from a Saturday night hangover...
With the exception of SRV's lead guitar bits, the only other human aspect is embodied by Bowie's vocals, which are fine indeed, offing the only warmth against a frigid funky backdrop that even makes Steely Dan's classic LPs sound raw by comparison.
Sound is comfortably 4-star territory because of the good mastering of the SACD layer, while the overall performance is a robotic 3 and a half stars, docked a half star because overuse of the Power Station studios' digital reverb unit(s) draws too much attention to itself on some tunes.
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