I've been listening to a lot of David Bowie over the past few weeks.
Expect a new Bowie article soon.
David Bowie: Blackstar - Review
This is it, the final chapter in a career unlike any other, and David Bowie’s final album, and similarly to 2013’s comeback ‘The Next Day’, ‘Blackstar’ shows that Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack, The Thin White Duke, Pierrot The Clown, Jareth The Goblin King or ‘just’ David Bowie, he wasn’t done with us yet, not even close. With it’s unique sound, apparently the result of Bowie and producer Tony Visconti listening to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ and a desire to “avoid rock ’n’ roll”, ‘Blackstar’ takes its place in David Bowie’s career as not just his final album, but also one of his finest.
The album opens with the title track, which appropriately sets the tone.
It shifts and turns at every moment, the first half welding gregorian chants and jazz elements to a stuttering drum and bass rhythm with each part offsetting another part to give the track a wholly unsettling but infectious tone.
Halfway through the chants take prominence, and give way to a syrupy sweet synth sound and one of Bowie’s most touching vocal performances coupled with his most unsettling lyrics since 1995’s ‘Outside’.
The whole track sounds similar to the jagged rhythms of ‘Outside’ meeting the sweeping soundscapes of the Berlin Trilogy.
Superior rerecordings of 2014’s ‘Sue’ and ‘'Tis A Pity She Was A Whore’ follow. The jazz band used for ‘Sue’ has been buried underneath a turbulent new bassline and drumbeat; distorted guitars wailing at every turn make the track very reminiscent of Bowie’s mid nineties collaborations with Nine Inch Nails. ‘’Tis A pity She Was A Whore’ benefits greatly from the new production, the percussion’s crisp and the lyrics are clearer in the mix. It’s moved away from 2014’s muddled dance number to a more sinister piece, the dark counterpart of the jazz / dance fare on 1993’s ‘Black Tie White Noise’.
Album centrepiece ‘Lazarus’ with lines such as “Look at me / I’m up in heaven” is impossible to listen to without thinking of the obvious. Nevertheless, it stands out as one of the strongest pieces on the record.
It, like the rest of the album, is mournful, but still restless, moving from fast rhythms to a slow, funeral twang.
The second part of Blackstar winds things down to a more cinematic sound in places. The frenetic beats take a step back with larger, slower arrangements dominating the final three tracks. Girl Loves Me piles in references to A Clockwork Orange alongside Nineteen Eighty-Four on top of sweary references to mortality, while ‘Dollar Days’ seems self-deprecatory in places, opening with the riffling of paper money, perhaps referencing Bowie’s admittance to selling out in the 1980’s, who knows. ‘Blackstar’ also shows a progression from ‘The Next Day’, where he showed what he could do with callbacks to each stage of his career, ‘Blackstar’ shows he was still willing to experiment. Don’t get me wrong, despite the album being full of sly nods to parts of his career, David Bowie has never sounded like this before.
Every track carries an appropriate atmosphere of finality with multiple callbacks to different phases of his career, whether it’s a harmonica practically identical to the parts on ‘Low’, or the jewel-encrusted skeleton in the ‘Blackstar’, supposedly the remains of Major Tom, which would appropriately bookend well with his first appearance (1969’s ‘Space Oddity’ considered the canon beginning to his career).
Many of the tracks run past the five-minute mark, and more casual listeners may be turned off by this fact. It may stand as one of David Bowie’s finest achievements, but that’s not to say it won’t challenge listeners, the title track doesn’t feature anything resembling a vocal until over five minutes in.
David Bowie’s long-time collaborator Tony Visconti describes Blackstar as “his parting gift”, and as a conclusion to a career unequalled in its unpredictability and quality, it succeeds. David Bowie may be gone, but it’s been one hell of a ride.
The album opens with the title track, which appropriately sets the tone.
It shifts and turns at every moment, the first half welding gregorian chants and jazz elements to a stuttering drum and bass rhythm with each part offsetting another part to give the track a wholly unsettling but infectious tone.
Halfway through the chants take prominence, and give way to a syrupy sweet synth sound and one of Bowie’s most touching vocal performances coupled with his most unsettling lyrics since 1995’s ‘Outside’.
The whole track sounds similar to the jagged rhythms of ‘Outside’ meeting the sweeping soundscapes of the Berlin Trilogy.
Superior rerecordings of 2014’s ‘Sue’ and ‘'Tis A Pity She Was A Whore’ follow. The jazz band used for ‘Sue’ has been buried underneath a turbulent new bassline and drumbeat; distorted guitars wailing at every turn make the track very reminiscent of Bowie’s mid nineties collaborations with Nine Inch Nails. ‘’Tis A pity She Was A Whore’ benefits greatly from the new production, the percussion’s crisp and the lyrics are clearer in the mix. It’s moved away from 2014’s muddled dance number to a more sinister piece, the dark counterpart of the jazz / dance fare on 1993’s ‘Black Tie White Noise’.
Album centrepiece ‘Lazarus’ with lines such as “Look at me / I’m up in heaven” is impossible to listen to without thinking of the obvious. Nevertheless, it stands out as one of the strongest pieces on the record.
It, like the rest of the album, is mournful, but still restless, moving from fast rhythms to a slow, funeral twang.
The second part of Blackstar winds things down to a more cinematic sound in places. The frenetic beats take a step back with larger, slower arrangements dominating the final three tracks. Girl Loves Me piles in references to A Clockwork Orange alongside Nineteen Eighty-Four on top of sweary references to mortality, while ‘Dollar Days’ seems self-deprecatory in places, opening with the riffling of paper money, perhaps referencing Bowie’s admittance to selling out in the 1980’s, who knows. ‘Blackstar’ also shows a progression from ‘The Next Day’, where he showed what he could do with callbacks to each stage of his career, ‘Blackstar’ shows he was still willing to experiment. Don’t get me wrong, despite the album being full of sly nods to parts of his career, David Bowie has never sounded like this before.
Every track carries an appropriate atmosphere of finality with multiple callbacks to different phases of his career, whether it’s a harmonica practically identical to the parts on ‘Low’, or the jewel-encrusted skeleton in the ‘Blackstar’, supposedly the remains of Major Tom, which would appropriately bookend well with his first appearance (1969’s ‘Space Oddity’ considered the canon beginning to his career).
Many of the tracks run past the five-minute mark, and more casual listeners may be turned off by this fact. It may stand as one of David Bowie’s finest achievements, but that’s not to say it won’t challenge listeners, the title track doesn’t feature anything resembling a vocal until over five minutes in.
David Bowie’s long-time collaborator Tony Visconti describes Blackstar as “his parting gift”, and as a conclusion to a career unequalled in its unpredictability and quality, it succeeds. David Bowie may be gone, but it’s been one hell of a ride.
Download: The entire album, you won’t hear anything like this for a long time.
I didn't do number ratings back then, but I'd likely place this as a 10/10 in hindsight.
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