Shaking America, drugs and much else from his way of life, David Bowie decamped to Europe and began to focus on a different approach with the help of Brian Eno, all while Tony Visconti and the core Station to Station band of Carlos Alomar, George Murray and Dennis Davis kept along with it. The result was the unexpected, astonishing Low, split between mysteriously compelling instrumentals like “Warszawa” and “Subterreneans” and brisk, fractured but still catchy as hell art-pop-rock songs like “Breaking Glass,” “Sound and Vision” and “Be My Wife.”

– Ned Raggett