Blackstar
David Bowie
(ISO Records)
Four stars
David Bowie's Blackstar would have been a four-star album with or without the outpouring of sadness over his death last weekend – but it would be foolish to pretend that this excellent parting gift doesn't have added significance now that he is gone. Of course it does.
Bowie released the record – his 25th – on his 69th birthday last week and died two days later, the result of a year-and-a-half battle with cancer about which few seemed to know.
He was probably savvy enough to know that had his life-and-death battle been common knowledge, this would have influenced the reception to his work, prompting a more flattering, welcoming response. But Bowie had no interest in a victory lap. As though he wanted Blackstar to stand on its own merits, he kept the news quiet.
He needn’t have worried. The record was lauded with high praise leading up to and following its release, with good reason – it is arguably his best album in 30 years (depending on how you view his 90s and turn-of-the-century output) – and it stands proud as the final landmark of a 40-plus-year career that was filled with high points.
The acclaim for the record preceded the shock and mourning of his death, which is how it should have been – but naturally, the added attention and poignancy benefits the bottom line. Downloads and streams of Blackstar have skyrocketed in the past few days.
It became something fans and non-fans alike now had to listen to. Was there any clue in the songs that Bowie was trying to tell us about his, or our own, mortality?
Did one of music’s few remaining true pioneering legends have any words of wisdom as he faced the end?
His epitaph is, indeed, right here. The outstanding Lazarus is a gothic-tinged, drum-heavy example of art-rock at its best, simultaneously self-referential and vague, and is probably the single track that best shows Bowie's state of mind.
“Look up here, I’m in heaven,” the song opens. “I’ve got scars that can’t be seen. I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen. Everybody knows me now.”
This would seem to be the work of a genius at peace.
Dollar Days also finds its narrator in a reflective state: "If I never see the English evergreens I'm running to, it's nothing to me. It's nothing to see." Bowie saw and did more than most of us can dream of – but like all of us, there could always have been more. "I'm dying to push their backs against the grain and fool them all again and again."
That Blackstar was so well received even before his death was hopefully some comfort to Bowie in his last days.
These seven songs, spanning 41 minutes, are among the most focused of his career, forming a cohesive – if a tad oblique – statement about life and creativity that is surreal to listen to now. Facing the void, Bowie turned to what he knew best and did better than most – he created.
As though it were his responsibility to leave on a high note, Blackstar is the work of an auteur who had nothing left to prove, but apparently plenty left to give.
kjeffers@thenational.ae
