MUSIC MARCH 17, 2013
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Yes, it’s a huge comeback. But for whom?
David Bowie’s new album, The Next Day is being praised for enacting one of the most dramatic returns to form in music history. It’s his first major work of fresh music in ten years—as all the many, many articles about it have reminded us. But it isn't Bowie himself who has made the dramatic return; it's the pop-music audience and my colleagues in the critical establishment. We've come back to Bowie after a long period of neglect and indifference that began some time before 2003, when he last released a full album of new material, Reality.
The Next Day is fine and serious, a collection of artful rock songs by a mature and ambitious musician in full command of his skills. Then again, so was Reality; and the album Bowie made a year before that one, Heathen, was better still. In fact, Heathen—a tight, lean guitar-heavy album produced by Tony Visconti—is aesthetically of a piece with The Next Day and is, song for song, at least as good if not superior to the new album. The big difference between The Next Day and both Heathen and Reality is something extra-musical, a matter of the aura surrounding the later work: the miracle narrative of creative rebirth.
Comebacks are sometimes acts of recovery on the part of the artist; sometimes, rediscovery on the part of the audience.
As Bowie suggests with the very title of The Next Day, a phrase that defines the present by its relationship to the past, he has picked up where he left off ten years ago, when he fell ill with heart trouble and decided to slow down for a while. The new album has the spare integrity of a band session, and the snapping dog-fight guitar work of Gerry Leonard and David Torn (both of whom played on both Heathen and Reality) dominate most of the tracks. Almost half the songs are excellent, and I think of that as a high quotient. Musically, the melodies are simple, sometimes just staccato phrases with nice turns here and there; and the lyrics are gray in meaning and, mostly, black in tone: In "Valentine's Day," Bowie tells a cryptic half-story about a kid on a shooting rampage; "I'd Rather Be High" is written in the voice of a soldier in trench battle; and "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" deals cynically with one of Bowie's favorite subjects, the allure of celebrity. Throughout the album, which was recorded in multiple sessions over about two years' time, Bowie is in superb voice—or, more accurately, voices. He doles out, from song to song, each of his vintage vocal incarnations, from the high-theater tenor of Ziggy Stardust (on "Valentine's Day") to the grim baritone brooding of Low ("Heat," a moody, synth-based piece, a bleak highpoint of the album).
In popular music, comebacks are sometimes acts of recovery on the part of the artist; sometimes, rediscovery on the part of the audience; and often, a combination of the two: Judy Garland, cleaned up from drugs (temporarily) and repositioned as a concert artist, at Carnegie Hall in 1961; Elvis, toned and leathered, suddenly irreconcilable with his corny B-movie persona, on his "Comeback Special" in 1968. David Bowie, the past master of kitsch rock, half-Judy/half-Elvis, has now managed a comeback that is both recovery and rediscovery: the triumphalist climax of his struggle with health problems and age and the rediscovery of talents that were underappreciated even before he paused production ten years ago. The Next Day, the perfectly titled and perfectly fine work at center of all this, does its part by being almost as good as Bowie's previous two albums.
9 comments
3,17,13, 5:32 pm, est// Never got David Bowie. No knock on him. Just never got him.
- basman
March 17, 2013 at 5:33pm
Well, basman, I do 'get' David Bowie, at least I like him. I wore out CDs of 'Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust' and the 1st disc of the 3-disc 'Platinum Collection.' But what I'd suggest is that if the new album represents a true comeback, it's a comeback not from ten years ago, but from thirty. Several years ago, I left that 'Platinum Collection' disc, which contained only Bowie's early-70s-era hits, in a rental car. Then a couple years back I bought the entire 57-track collection on iTunes. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Bowie went to the dogs at around 1980. The only reason I still have discs 2 and 3 on my iPhone is that I've been too lazy to create a playlist with the Bowie songs I still want to hear. Whenever one of those 80s-Bowie songs comes up in 'shuffle' with those godawful orchestral synths and electronic drums, I have to skip through and hope I land on the Stones, the Band or Chuck Berry. The later Bowie stuff all sounds hopelessly dated, and even at the time it wasn't particularly original, entirely of a piece with the Duran Duran synth-pop with which it was sharing airtime on Mtv.
- AaronW
March 17, 2013 at 11:30pm
Oh, and check out this Flight of the Conchords vid for one SPOT ON yet affectionate send-up of the White Duke. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8f_XCH3zmM
- AaronW
March 17, 2013 at 11:34pm
I listened to 'The Next Day' when it was streamed free on iTunes 10 days ago, before it went on sale. It started slow, but the last few songs were classic Bowie, hard orchestral rock. But AARONW is right--Seventies Bowie is the best. And the best of Bowie is very good. BASMAN, check out the 'China Girl' video here with the young Bowie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_8IXx4tsus You'll 'get' Bowie for at least this one song. This particular video has over 3 million hits. I'm playing it for the third time as I type.
- magboy47.
March 18, 2013 at 1:12pm
aaron...you sound like a nostalgist when lamenting Bowie's mid-80s and early 90s work. But that's ok. There is plenty of Bowie's work that is less than stellar when you feel like he's reacting to verses informing or being informed by the musical trends of the moment. I suggest checking out Earthling which is a great album I think and captures a rawness that lacked in his "let's dance" phase. I've only listened to the new lp once so far on Spotify and it's pretty good. I won't make a commitment to buying it just yet until I give it another go. But as a fan of particular artists, I have plenty of albums that initially I didn't like upon the first listen but then they grew on me over several replays and went on to become favorite albums. Like Radiohead's Amnesiac. For Bowie it's a bit difficult for me to mark "favorites" vs albums I can't really listen to repeatedly. I can listen to Low anytime. Let's Dance...not so much...ever. Then his album Hours was and is still an album I can't decide if I like or not. That he still challenges his audience is a good thing. That he challenges himself is just as good otherwise he'd have retired long ago.
- singlspeed
March 18, 2013 at 1:36pm
3,18,13 2:20, pm, est//// Well I just took the advice of the youngest and hippest of you all Magboy who like me gets a year younger each year. I listened to China Doll. Short of checking out the lyrics more closely, I don't know what there's to like. And if it wasn't for the video, I couldn't have lasted the about 4 minutes. I love the blues, most jazz,some of the outside stuff is rough for me, rock and roll, pop, soul, r and b, reggae, doo wop, roots, alt country, outlaw country, gospel, blue grass, some rock, some disco, you name it. I like to think my taste is pretty catholic. But I found the beat monotonous and uncompelling, his voice not really generic but lifeless and unpleasing, and save for the ending bluesy guitar riff at around 3:47, which was nice but all too short, I found nothing that I liked, interesting, fun, hooky, danceable, needing a re-listen. Nada. So, again, it's me not him, but based on this bit of an example, I still don't get the guy.
- basman
March 18, 2013 at 2:22pm
I've always appreciated and had a lot of affection for Bowie's work. Hajdu mentions Reality and Heathen (the track "Slip Away" is a gem), but I think all of his 90's and early Aughts work has been undervalued. What about Earthling, Outside, and hours...? Those are great albums that never got the attention that, in my opinion, they deserve.
- mwittenphd
March 18, 2013 at 2:58pm
BASMAN, if you don't like 'China Doll,' it's him, David Bowie, you don't like. 'China Doll' is David Bowie. Like you, my tastes in music are catholic. However, even though I like jazz, it takes too much time to listen to. For me, it's the most intellectual of music, even more so than classical trios, quartets, or quintets. I'm much more into emotion in music than intellect--I use it as a mood-elevating drug. My favorite drug/music is country rock, followed closely by blues rock. Some of Bowie's music has a blues-rock flavor.
- magboy47.
March 18, 2013 at 3:11pm
certainly his albums in the 70's were phenomenal, but to judge him on revolutionary music compared with what he produces today is unrealistic. I did enjoy a lot of his 80's material, especially his concerts which were great.
- blackton
March 18, 2013 at 11:01pm