Which, given what was about to
unfold, is more than a little bit spooky. Two days later, David Bowie was dead.
It all seemed so surreal. Nobody
was prepared for the devastating news of his passing. And although there had
been rumours and hints about the poor state of his health around the time of
the release of The Next Day back in 2013, he'd largely kept the severity of his
cancer a closely guarded secret.
Blackstar was the
cross-generational superstar's 25th studio album, released to coincide with his
69th birthday. The day it was released, the same day as the Pitchfork
review was published, a good friend – quite possibly the biggest Bowie fan I
know – had shared with me some of her thoughts on the album. I invited her to
put those words into some semblance of order so I could use them for a (guest post)
album review.
But then, in the immediate wake of
Bowie's death it just didn't seem appropriate, or make any sense, to be
offering a critique of his final work. An album co-producer Tony Visconti later
called a “parting gift to fans” ... I decided to wait until the dust settled
and I had my own copy of the album.
By that stage, Blackstar was at
the top of the New Zealand album charts, and Bowie had another ten albums
inside the Top 40. What I thought of the great man's swan song hardly mattered
in the slightest; the album's commercial relevance was already assured, and a whole
bunch of earlier work suddenly had fresh chart momentum. As is so often the way
of things when the Grim Reaper comes calling.
Blackstar opens with the
sprawling title track, which – at something close to ten minutes in duration – feels
like several recurring ideas and themes (death, certainly) rolled into one. At
the very least it's something of a musical throwback to the experimental, arty,
prog-rock excesses of the early Seventies glam period which informed so much of
Bowie's best work.
The fragility of his voice is
immediately apparent on the opener – as it was throughout The Next Day – and
it's something that stands out across the remaining thirty or so minutes of
Blackstar. Rather than disguise this, or even attempt to, Bowie uses it as a
tool to portray varying degrees of emotion, and an unapologetic sense of
vulnerability. It seems the alien may have been human after all.
A couple of these tunes have had
previous outings. ‘Sue (or in a season of crime)’ was released as a single in
2014, and appeared on that year's three-disc compilation set Nothing Has
Changed, while the less ambiguous ‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore’ saw the light of
day as that single's B-side. I note that the saxophone part (on ‘Whore’)
enjoyed a makeover for the album version. Sax being one of the more prominent
instrumental features on Blackstar.
And certainly, regardless of any
additional poignancy it now offers, current single and album centrepiece
‘Lazarus’ is an undoubted highlight here. It appeals as the most
straightforward “pop song” on an album which veers strongly away from all
traditional forms of that description.
Whatever else David Bowie was,
he was an artist who favoured innovation and experimentation above all else,
and there’s plenty of that on Blackstar.
And yes, of course, there’s all
that slightly unnerving stuff about death. Who else but David Bowie could get
away with such an outrageous parting shot?
And so he’s gone. But not
really. His music lives on, his discography is something quite phenomenal, and
Blackstar is a worthy, if very late addition to that wonderful legacy.
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