David Bowie - The Next Day

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
A very good Bowie album

This is a very good David Bowie album, in my view. It's a great relief to say it, because when some of the gods of my youth have returned in...well...late middle age after a long absence the results have not always been very good, to say the least. Here, Bowie shows that he is still a major songwriting and performing talent and that he still has a genuine edge.

We have had a little time now to digest the track Where Are We Now? and to assess its true merit now that the "Blimey!" factor following its surprise release has worn off a bit. I still think that it's a very good song indeed. I did worry that some of the fragile, almost-out-of-tune vocal wasn't a deliberate effect but the voice of a man who can't quite sing as he used to, but - thank heavens - I was quite wrong. It is followed on the album by Valentine's Day, a track which wouldn't have been out of place on Aladdin Sane and which Bowie sings superbly, and there's plenty of other evidence here that he's still got it.

The songs seem to me to be vintage Bowie. There is the full gamut from singable, rocky tunes like Valentine's Day, through lovely tender songs like Where Are We Now? to the almost tuneless and weird-rhythmed If You Can See Me, with plenty in between. He certainly hasn't settled into a comfortable rut in middle age - If You Can See Me has joined my list of Almost Unlistenable Bowie Tracks and I'm delighted to see that he is still prepared to challenge and unsettle his audience even if personally I don't like the result.

The lyrics, of course, are complex, allusive and often elusive. As always, you can try to analyse what they "really" mean, but I've never found that a very productive way of approaching Bowie because I suspect that, as many poets have, he often puts together words for their sound or effect without them having any "true meaning." I love his lyrics and I often just enjoy the evocative sound of phrases like this in Dirty Boys: "When the sun goes down/And the die is cast..." and let my imagination do the rest. Similarly, in The Stars, we get things like, "Here they are upon the stairs/Sexless and unaroused..." which makes little literal sense in the context but it's an amazingly arresting lyric which sparks off all sorts of mental images and thoughts - which is what good lyrics should do.

I really like this album. The production is excellent; it is varied and sensitive and shows every song off at its best. It will take a while before it is clear whether or not it is a true Bowie classic. My sense is that it's probably not quite a classic, but it's a very good album indeed and warmly recommended.