David Bowie
Blackstar

We know, David Bowie is not a man of this planet, not in a strict sense, at least. He is the man who fell to earth, yet he does not belong to our race. Once again, he breaks and disconnects every parameter, once again, he will make people talk about him as one of the last contemporary musical geniuses. He comes out with this Blackstar and, coincidentally, on his 69th birthday, and for a couple of months it has been talked about as a masterpiece of innovation and music of the future. "If something works, throw it away" he has always said, and no one can deny him even this time. During a stay in New York, a friend takes him to a jazz club in Manhattan, where he listens to a band led by a saxophonist, Donny McCaslin. We're talking about jazz, a musical genre certainly not very present in Bowie's discography, yet, with the foresight of a seer, he already sees the group playing on his record, already savors the sense of fragmentation and disorientation that these jazz musicians could bring to his music. Of course, Bowie has always been surrounded by superior musicians and technicians, it's pointless to name names, but the jazz band, yes it's a novelty. And then, what happens? Well, the result is this Blackstar, whose vinyl has been spinning on my turntable continuously from 10 AM this morning. Composed and recorded between the end of 2014 and mid-2015 with quality that calling superior is saying nothing. Bowie proves to be unique, in every choice, in every form. Art is his art and at every moment it must convey what he is, feels, lives, experiments, savors. Already for a few weeks, a kind of single, somewhat unusual, with a track, "Blackstar" of 10 minutes, combining sounds of avant-garde rock, pop, new sounds and very refined rhythms, even from trip-hop and dub origin. These are syncopated flashes that peek into rarely explored territories and changes of atmosphere, changes of rhythm and tonal varied threads that start, divide to go in a thousand directions only to return to recognize themselves with multiple nuances. Some moments remind of things already experimented by Scott Walker, but this is the malaise of today's music. The other track that had already been heard before release, "Lazarus," is a sublime crescendo, and its finale is truly pure sublimation, a state transition from solid, palpable, to gaseous, ethereal, angelic. But, obviously, it's not enough and it's not all here. There's for instance the funny pop anomaly of the concluding "I Can't Give Everything Away," a sort of social experiment that aims to close a predominantly dark work with strong and dark tones, with a certain tonal openness and evocative blends. And in the middle, many, many things over which often dominates, beyond the ever warmer and more expressive voice, the saxophone, true alter ego, counterpoint of this work, just like Alomar's guitar for many other records of the past. An example is "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)," obliquely (to say it like Eno) fusion, already presented in the 2014 compilation, "Nothing Has Changed." The jazz gets sick, contaminates with soul, tends to prevail and then to disappear and reappear, in seven minutes of long and never codified notes. Another strong piece of the album, the twisted stage play of "Tis A Pity She Was a Whore," a theatrical work where every instrument is an actor and with a bit of grandstanding, sometimes grotesque, it pushes to the limit of possibilities. Not that the songs not mentioned do not deserve mention and my micro-judgment, no. It's that we can still talk so much and add absolutely nothing to the real and absolute goodness of this album. And so, let's close here. Bowie, from alien on Earth to mad blind prophet of a future he already has in hand for who knows how long. And then, do we want to call it pop? We can even, but perhaps and more simply, Art is better.