Like everyone who is neither scary monster (nor super creep), I have been thrilled by the re-emergence of David Bowie the record-maker—as opposed to David Bowie the "style icon" or David Bowie the indie rock band referent or David Bowie the cred vampire or David Bowie the IPO or whatever. (In all candor, I loved the fact that The Next Day existed more than I loved the actual record, though I was delighted by the clear signal it sent that Weird Bowie was back at the helm.)
Weird Bowie has now been rejoined by Song Bowie, and on first hearing, the results are fantastic.
I have just spent the last three hours listening to a stream of Bowie's new album, Blackstar, which comes out Friday, and before I go back for more, I just wanted to pop my head up out of the groundhog hole to say: BLACKSTAR IS A GREAT FUCKING DAVID BOWIE RECORD. For real. Not just great because it's a David Bowie record, but a great David Bowie record. No, not Hunky Dory great, but it's also nowhere near that mode. Maybe it's a little more like Lodger great. Which is great. But comparisons to his past work really don't work. There's obviously late-middle Scott Walker in the mix, but Bowie could never be that obscurant. At seven songs and 42 minutes, Blackstar is not an endurance test; when it's over you want more of it. That's because Bowie at his most out there will always have a little greasepaint around the collar. He's still in show business, even if the show consists of a lot more hiding than it used to. These are songs. At the tender age of 68, he sounds like he's bursting with them.
“Blackstar”
The album is rich and spooky and weird and inventive and surprising and full, utterly full, of life. The words are full of suggestive epigrams ("Where the fuck did Monday go?" and "I was looking for your ass") but an even more alluring sense that Bowie might be digging into far more interesting territory—images and bits of dialogue arise about death, regret, longing, class, and the inherent dystopia of modern urban life. There also seems to be quite a bit about the self—e.g. the mischief riddle invitation/chorus refrain/song title "I Can't Give Everything Away."
The first-person abandonment drama "Sue, or In a Season of Crime" sounds like it could be a companion piece to "Repetition" from Lodger. "Girl Loves Me" spills over with A Clockwork Orange It all makes you want to stop everything and just immerse yourself in the cold freshwater pool of these seven songs and not come up for air until you've figured them out.
My first thought is that Blackstar is a bridge to the parallel universe in which Let's Dance was not followed by several years of lesser material that struggled to wring art from the washcloth of a stadium-sized audience. It doesn't sound '80s exactly; it only sounds like Bowie time. But there's something about a saxophone...
Speaking of: You may have been led to believe this is a jazz album. It is in NO MEASURABLE SENSE a jazz album. It's a rock album that features jazz musicians, including a prominent saxophone in lots of its songs, much as a lot of rock music used to do. Not in a wanly Springsteen/Clemons way, or an extrapolated Coltrane way, or a ghastly mellow "Careless Whisper" way, but in an artful, arty David Bowie way. (For a moment there, I thought of "Young Americans," but only for a moment.)
When young people started dressing in '80s garbage clothes again, I thought the saxophone was destined for an imminent comeback after having spent the past couple of decades in cool jail. Not so, as it happens. But Blackstar is redolent with the instrument, played throughout the album by Donny McCaslin. Leave it to Bowie to make the tiredest thing in the world sound vibrant and essential.
“Lazarus”
The album is also supposedly related to Bowie's new stage musical, Lazarus, with which it shares at least one song. For an excellent illustration of why the legitimate stage is mysteriously, if self-evidently inferior to rock and roll, however, please listen to the album/single version of "Lazarus" above and then the one sung by the actor Michael C. Hall on TV below. (By the way, I'm not saying Hall isn't a good singer. He's very skilled. But he's acting. Bowie's performance is something else entirely. He has been playing the role of David Bowie for a very long time.)
Anyway, yes. This has all been a long way around saying that Blackstar is full of very exciting stuff. It's a little early to say, but it might even be the best David Bowie record of 2016. Fingers crossed. I'm going to go listen to it 20 more times.
PS
If you're looking to celebrate Friday's record release (which is also Bowie's 69th birthday), maybe you should head to the David Bowie Birthday Party at Chop Suey:
