"THE NEXT DAY"
Music and Lyrics by David Bowie
except "Boss Of Me" Music and Lyrics by David Bowie and Gerry Leonard
and "How Does The Grass Grow?" Music and Lyrics by David Bowie and Jerry Lordan
Produced by David Bowie and Tony Visconti
Released March 8, 2013
It was a musical event that was not meant to happen. Or at least, that what it seemed to be for a very long time.
Mysteriously, at the stroke of midnight on January 8, 2013, and David Bowie's birthday no less, the once so-called "Thin White Duke" announced that he would be releasing an album of all new material, his first since his album "Reality" (released September 16, 2003). I, as had so many of Bowie's fans, had their jaws collectively hit the pavement with this news because I had honestly felt that perhaps, David Bowie had since retired from the music business altogether. And frankly, who could blame him as this was an artist who had scaled the musical mountaintops over and again through a series of head spinning reinventions and chameleonic characterizations that have left listeners and artists endlessly enraptured and inspired for over 40 years. he had absolutely nothing left to prove to anyone and I firmly believe that not even one soul could begrudge him if he wanted to live out the remainder of his life completely out of the spotlight, public scrutiny and the desires of his generations of fans.
But, here he is...ten years later and after two years of secretive recording sessions with longtime producer Tony Visconti, Bowie has re-emerged with a loud, aggressive album that has completely belied any rumors of his possibly failing health and impending demise. If anything, "The Next Day" finds Bowie fiercely staring down his winter years in sublime acknowledgement as well as an inability to go away quietly.
For an artist that it as internationally known as David Bowie it still amazes me as to how unknowable he actually is, especially as he means and represents different things to different people and even generations. He may mean a host of things to those who grew up with his music as it originally appeared. And then, there are the people, quite a number of younger women whom I have met in my own life, who connected with David Bowie when they were small children as they watched the film fantasy "Labyrinth" (1986), his collaboration with Director Jim Henson, Producer George Lucas and written by Monty Python's Terry Jones. To them, Bowie's landmark work of the 1970s just did not exist at all.
As for me, when I was a child in the 1970s, David Bowie was a fascinating yet terrifying figure for me to behold as he really seemed to be one of those interstellar creatures he sang about. His impenetrable visage was just unreadable to me. And when he appeared on a Christmas special with Bing Crosby, that was the moment that confused me the most as he seemed to be so friendly and approachable and yet I still feared that he would soon shed his skin and eat poor Mr. Crosby under the Christmas tree.
By the time I was 14, "Let's Dance" (released April 14, 1983) was all over the airwaves and music video programs and while a tad less alien, his sense of style and cool was also just so unreachable and unattainable to us mere mortals. By some time in the 1990s, when Bowie was experiencing a creative rebirth beginning with "Black Tie, White Noise" (released April 5, 1993) and continuing onwards with "Outside" (released September 26, 1995), the brutally dense and dark collaboration with Brian Eno, I finally began to undertake the full breadth of his musical legacy, realizing at long last his sheer greatness.
For every single one of us who has ever listened to and embraced the artistry of David Bowie, the songs, characters, images, sounds and especially the lyrics are crucially malleable. for all we know, he could be writing in a strikingly direct tone and we might have no idea of knowing it. Conversely, his most oblique and arcane lyrics could me his most open. With "The Next Day," I think that somehow, he has found a spot to exist in the middle while also making the experience so individualized for all listeners.
On a sonic level, the musical aesthetics of "The Next Day" are all forward thinking while also finding some sort of middle-ground between "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)" (released September 12, 1980) and "Heathen" (released June 11, 2002) plus the aforementioned "Reality," and with musical signposts from Bowie's cleverly placed along the way. The songs themselves are tightly written, containing as much music as possible into pieces that typically run between three and four minutes and Bowie's voice is at a superior level throughout, despite the ten year absence.
The music and lyrics are in virtual lockstep as they compliment and even conflict with each other. The title track opens the album with a tough, chugging groove as Bowie narrates a tale of what could be deathly departure ("Look into my eyes he tells her/ I'm gonna say goodbye, he says yeah..") and impending mortality ("Here am I/Not quite dying/My body left to rot in a hollow tree..."). "Where Are We Now?" finds Bowie in a rare melancholy, somber and meditative mood as he travels back through his old Berlin haunts. The soaring "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" gives us another exploration into Bowie's, and our very own, love/hate nature with fame and celebrity ("We will never be rid of these stars/But I hope they live forever"), now even more intensified through our massively increased exposure in the 21st century.
Throughout the album, Bowie continues to push backwards and forwards in time with tales of love, youth, violence, anti-war sentiments and the renewal of passion with the pounding "Love Is Lost," the harmonically grim "Valentine's Day," the appropriately spacey and almost Lennon-esque "I'd Rather Be High" and the instantly catchy "Boss Of Me." Additionally, I really love the sleazy cabaret funk of "Dirty Boys" immediately made me feel as if I was seated in some side street eastern European night club, where I hoped that I would not be seen. The propulsive rhythms and "la la la" choruses of "How Does The Grass Grow?" and "(You Will) Set The World On Fire" are energetic roof raisers. And I urge you to purchase the deluxe edition of the album (or double vinyl) which contains even more songs, including the showstopping album closer "I'll Take You There."
And take us there he does as David Bowie returns to us with an album that makes you feel as if you have really been somewhere. "The Next Day" is an album that David Bowie did not have to make and yet, it is an intensely purposeful and demanding work from an artist who has given to us more than we can possibly ever truly know and the arrival of an album with its level of excellence is a blessing for all of us, especially as we thought we would never hear from him again.
Perhaps the humorously ironic album cover art, which contains a title card strategically placed completely over the image from Bowie's classic "'Heroes'" (released October 14, 1977) album. As the songs of "The Next Day" function as sort of an existential time machine hurling from past to present to hopes and fears of the future in a collection of moments, Bowie's journey mirrors the journey of every single listener as we travel through our own lives each and every day. The past, while being the past, is never obliterated. And with the future unknown, all we really do have is now, this very moment. Yet, how do we live onwards for today and the next day and the next?
While David Bowie does not supply us with the answers, and really how could he, he has given us the perfect soundtrack to do so.
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