David Bowie
Blackstar

According to a double interpretation, Lazarus was resurrected by Jesus, took his bed, and went away, or took his Book (the Book of the Torah) and went away. Who knows if this dual meaning is at the foundation of the two disturbing videos Blackstar and Lazarus directed by filmmaker Johan Renck. In the first, Bowie holds a “sacred” text like a prophet, in the second, he is Lazarus, in a hospital bed dictating the ecstatic visions of passage from death to eternal life directly to the White Duke. As with the greats, Hölderlin, Michelangelo, John Coltrane, David Bowie also speaks to us symbolically about his relationship with the “sacred” and the “mystical,” as already declared back in 1976 in Station to Station, and reiterated here on his 69th birthday, with the most anticipated album of 2016: Blackstar. Only three years after The Next Day, Bowie surprises once again with an experimental and expansive work between modern jazz and anti-rock attitude. The jazz-based structure of the entire album is entrusted to a “spine-chilling” band composed of Donny McCaslin, Mark Giuliana, Tim Lefebvre, Jason Lindner, jazz guitarist Ben Monder, and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. The impeccable production is entrusted to Tony Visconti, the only interlocutor of the Bowie brand today. But this last one from the Duke: how is it? It’s an excellent album, completely different from any other album by the Duke, and it is played excellently in every part: it will become a classic. As with Station to Station, the duration of the album is essential: 41:13 min. Among the seven tracks stand out: the apocalyptic pathos of the title track, the Early-Cure oriented class of Lazarus, the stylistic oddity of Girl Loves Me, in one with the new dizzying and cinematic versions of 'Tis a Pitty She Was A Whore and Sue (Or in a Season of Crime), tracks we already knew from Nothing Has Changed (yet another unnecessary collection from 2014), transport us to the center of that estranging and attractive sonic imagery, as in the most daring works of the Duke. But everything unsettling and thrilling built around listening to the first five tracks crumbles and vanishes in a clear change of register, more subdued, with the classic-Bowie of Dollar Days and I Can’t Give Everything Away, returning to the entire work a not completely experimental and dark cut, but close, as much as possible, to the tracks of Black Tie White Noise. The Bowie/McCaslin duo works perfectly, and brings the Duke's lyrics to the height of his expressive talents. A separate discussion is warranted for the totally hermetic, symbolic, and unabashed lyrics (e.g. in Lazarus, Bowie shouts “I was looking for your ass”), which we leave to the persistent Bowieologists to comment on. Meanwhile, Blackstar improves with each listen, and it doesn't matter if in the end, a chilly sadness and explicit intellectual anger pervade the entire album: Bowie doesn’t need to unnecessarily entertain his fans with the easy enthusiasms of pop, and, like Picasso, is a tireless artist who continues to give us his records, always inspired, like at the beginning of his career challenging new narrative horizons. So we welcome with great respect the 29th studio work of the most oddity artist of our sonic space. (P.S. obviously the album count includes Tin Machine I, Tin Machine II, Labyrinth, The Buddha of Suburbia, and excludes Toy)