We’re only eight days into January, and David Bowie has already dropped one of the best albums of the year
Are there any living and working musicians in rock/pop music as legendary as David Bowie? One could perhaps argue that there’s Paul McCartney, but for most alternative music nerds such as myself, he wouldn’t even get close to matching the influence and power that Bowie holds. But it’s worthwhile making the comparison anyway, because McCartney represents the ultimate elder statesman of rock music, content to please nostalgic crowds with the classics ad infinitum for the rest of his days. While Bowie’s been around only slightly fewer years, he’s proved himself to be a much more prickly and picky character in the decades since the height of his success. He may not ever regain the critical and commercial spotlight he once held in the 70’s, but if he gives a single fuck, he certainly hasn’t shown it. The reinvention and progression that has been a part of his aesthetic from the very beginning has never gone away, and he’s remained dedicated to forging bold new paths through his entire career.
Bowie’s newest album, Blackstar, is no exception to this, though it’s also proof that making fresh new music doesn’t require a rejection of the past. The sound of this album combines the improvisational solos and crescendos of jazz with the tightly wound rhythms and arrangements of krautrock, mining the various styles that defined both Bowie in his heyday and his contemporaries at the time. But despite the vaguely retro aesthetic, this album is unmistakably, brilliantly Bowie in 2015, thanks nearly entirely to his vocal performance.
He sounds more vitalic and inspired than he ever has as his distinctive voice sits uncomfortably but rightly above the moody instrumentation. “I’ve got nothing left to lose,” the 69-year-old proclaims on “Lazarus,” and it sounds like it. While Bowie’s voice has always been somewhat extraterrestrial in effect, here he sounds more grounded and human than ever, but this fighting spirit mixed with his daring artistic experimentalism makes him sound all the more enigmatic. He’s as gripping and mesmerizing as he is mobilizing and inspiring, and he adds the essential voice to what would already be a stunning instrumental album.
And that instrumentation really does deserve to be highlighted here. Outside of Bowie himself, the most distinctive sounds throughout the album are Mark Guiliana’s drums and Donny McCaslin’s saxophone, which sound incredible on their own, but mix together in an organic synergy that can rarely be found outside of jazz. On “Blackstar,” “Tis A Pity She Was a Whore,” and “Sue (Or In A Season of Crime,” Guiliana builds an intricate rhythmic intensity that feels equal parts post-punk and bebop, while McCaslin interjects between verses with avant-garde stylings that conduct the consistent, even repetitive beats into climatic builds and restrained falls with masterful subtlety.
This dynamic leads the way for more instrumental layers: new guitar and flute lines will pop up three-fourths of the way through an already hefty song, adding sounds upons gorgeous sounds until the songs purposefully collapse under their own weight. Late-game chords changes will perfectly mix sweet and sour, recalling melodies that were forgotten earlier in the song but in fundamentally different ways. One particular highlight is the distorted bassline that pops up just after the three minute mark of “Sue (Or In a Season of Crime),” which hits a sudden almost Lightning Bolt-esque intensity before dissipating almost immediately, then comes back in the final moments of the song in a dramatic climax.
Some of the album’s best moments come when Bowie’s voice and the instrumentals temporarily combine into one. His grunts and screams at the end of “Tis A Pity She Was a Whore” are a perfect counterpoint to the wailing sax chaos, for example. A harshly distorted guitar seems to be responding angrily to the lines he delivers throughout “Lazarus.” And “Girl Loves Me” is easily his most distinctive vocal performance: “Where the fuck did the Monday go?” he asks repeatedly, his voice rising to comical peaks towards the end of every sentence and reverberating alarmingly. He seems to shake and rattle the whole track. In the middle of the song he repeats the question until his voice and the rhythm underpinning it are overtaken by synth strings and squealing noise, then everything snaps back into place, bending and twisting dizzyingly towards the outro.
Then there’s the final two tracks. “Dollar Days” breaks away from the rhythmic intensity of everything that came before it, the drums taking a back seat for once to strumming of guitars and an increased focus on melody. Despite the relative relaxation this track offers, the lines Bowie delivers here most explicitly reference the unflinching and determined energy he’s regained recently: “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to, it’s nothing to me,” he claims, fully aware that he’s of an age where most have settled into a quiet retirement, but rejecting this proposition fully in the face of all the work he has left to do. The best track on the album, “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” is the most sonically reminiscent of Bowie’s past. The drum machine that leads into the song and the harmonica that kicks in shortly after specifically remind me of “A New Career In a New Town,” while the droning synths recall the latter half of the album that song is on, Low, which remains Bowie’s greatest achievement. It’s a masterclass in returning to the past without indulging in empty nostalgia.
Through the time I’ve spent with this album, I was surprised to keep being reminded of an artist I’ve never once associated with David Bowie: Swans’ Michael Gira. Like Gira, Bowie is an artist who’s been working for decades and has come back from a long hiatus, and like him, he did so with a solid but safe album (Bowie’s The Next Day, Swans’ My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky). But in this analogy, Blackstar is Swans’ 2012 masterpiece The Seer, a brilliantly vital and defiantly experimental album to come long after the supposed glory days of that artist which redefines him for a new generation by taking life-long artistic obsessions and distilling them in a fresh, confident, and artistically pure expression. If this is the dawn of a new era of Bowie, then I will stand by with giddy anticipation for what he will do next. But even if this is it, Blackstar is a hell of an album, the first one he’s made in ages that can sit proudly next to the most noteworthy excerpts of his discography as a defining work of one of the most legendary figures of rock music.
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