David Bowie aims high with Blackstar
DAVID BOWIE ? (Blackstar) (ISO/Columbia/Sony)
Atrue showman knows when to bow out and leave ’em wanting, which is exactly what David Bowie — perhaps the truest showman rock ’n’ roll has ever known — did after health issues forced him to abruptly abandon his Reality tour in 2004.
He went so resolutely silent just as Reality and its legitimately classicin-hindsight 2002 predecessor, Heathen, were signalling a fertile, latecareer creative rebirth that he got off on coasting through a mixed bag of familiar Bowie tropes (and a neardecade’s worth of rumours of his impending demise) when he finally returned to the studio for 2013’s goodbut-not-great and ultimately rather overrated The Next Day.
On his 69th birthday this Friday, however, Bowie gifts his fans with a challenging new record worthy of his legendary status as one of pop music’s most dedicated adventurers. Blackstar — or, as it’s officially stylized — is a capricious avant- rock freakout realized with the aid of longtime producer Tony Visconti and a new band led by free-jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin.
It doesn’t give itself up easily, but it’s also dense and difficult enough to sustain you through the winter months should you choose to go in.
“Blackstar” First unveiled in November, this enigmatic opening epic skitters in as a queasily portentous combo of Robert Wyatt and electro-Radiohead before tearing itself apart in a fit of sax-mad, free-jazz pique at the fourminute mark and re-emerging with Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke and Let’s Dance- era slickster Bowie grooving together as one for another six.
Might be about ISIS, might be an Illuminati-approved prophecy about the imminent, catastrophic return of the ghost planet Nibiru. Whatever it is, “You’re a flash in the pan / I’m the Great I Am” is the lyric to beat.
“’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” Coils tighter and tighter on a lockedon, live-sounding rhythm track laid down by bassist Tim Lefebvre and percussionist Mark Guiliana while Bowie’s measured croon dances against Jason Linder’s free-form dapples of electric piano and McCaslin’s frantic sax. As much as some might hate the reference, there’s an audibly fresh and excited “new band” energy crackling away here that immediately brings to mind Bowie’s first, wrongly rejected 1989 album with Tin Machine. “Lazarus” This is the only blatant shout-out to Lazarus, the Bowie musical currently playing off-Broadway in New York — which is itself a shout-out, of sorts, to Bowie’s 1976 feature-film star turn in The Man Who Fell to Earth — on ?. Loses its way a bit after the Cureesque intro gives way to some aimless songwriting and much smooth, after-hours sax swank straight out of an ’80s Michelob Light commercial, but guitarist Ben Monder’s sharp, pinging tones keep it interesting.
“Sue (Or In a Season of Crime)” A flailing, relentless tumult originally released in far less “aggro,” more explicitly “jazzbo” form with accompaniment from the Maria Schneider Orchestra as half of a 10-inch Record Store Day single to accompany the Nothing Has Changed compilation in November of 2014. This version is rougher-hewn, heavier and by far the superior of the two, once again slamming the repetitive tension conjured by that amazing rhythm section against McCaslin’s unhinged virtuosity and Bowie’s unflappable cool to deliriously woozy effect.
“Girl Loves Me” Producer Visconti has declared rapper Kendrick Lamar’s ambitious 2015 opus To Pimp a Butterfly a? influence on equal footing with the work of storied jazz arrangers Gil Evans and Stan Kenton, and this is where that statement starts making sense the first time around. Not that Bowie raps or anything (and thank
Blackstar. you for that), but “Girl Loves Me” definitely owes its determined, lowslung stomp, string-laced, cinematic textures and obsessive detail to the school of Dr. Dre. The yelped “Where the f--- did Monday go?” refrain is also ?’s hardest to shake.
“Dollar Days” Wherein “The Man Who Sold the World” shimmers back into focus with singularly Bowie-esque selfawareness. “I’m dying to / Push their backs against the grain / And fool them all again and again / I’m trying to,” he sings in full, classic/cosmic swoon, while guitarist Monder gnarls up a handful of decent Mick Ronson riffs behind him. Then the whole thing peters out on a pitterpatter of cheap drum-machine beats that lead . . . nowhere in particular. Advantage: Bowie.
“I Can’t Give Everything Away” That’s a mission statement, right there. One could view it as ironic, then, that — after an album’s worth of material that once again defies our preconceptions of what, as the recent touring art exhibit put it, “David Bowie is…” — it emanates from a song so unapologetically redolent of Bowie’s oft-maligned, post- Scary Monsters ’80s-“pop” period. As with all things Bowie, however, it’s left to the listener to decide what’s artifice, what’s accident, what’s design and what’s simply the product of a singleminded visionary doing whatever the hell he wants for as long as he’s able.