David Bowie – Blackstar

Final Album by Rock Legend David Bowie

Blackstar is the final album by the recently deceased and iconic rock musician David Bowie, the last in an influential, decades long career marked by innovation, including such albums as space-themed rock odyssey The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Heroes, his renowned collaboration with Brian Eno. In addition to music, Bowie was also active in film; he is perhaps best known in this regard for his role as Goblin King Jareth in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.

On top of its important position in regard to his career, Blackstar is given further significance by the revelation, made public after his death, that Bowie was well aware of his impending mortality throughout the recording process, meaning the album could be said to constitute his artistic last words. Given these factors, the direction the album takes is bold and surprising. Whereas the more obvious choice for such a record would seem to be an attempt at summing up an artist’s career, building on the sound for which they are known and rounding out their overall artistic statement, Bowie’s last LP instead breaks off in a new direction, sounding markedly different from anything he has produced previously.

Very important to the record is the presence of drummer Mark Guiliana, whose tight, breakbeat style drumming adds an electronic feel to the album, in contrast to the more rock influenced style for which Bowie is typically known. This is most apparent on the fourth song, “Sue (Or in A Season of Crime),” which is a straight up breakbeat tune, but also features heavily elsewhere, as on the record’s epic opening track “Blackstar.” The song begins with a spacey electronic influenced vamp under Bowie’s dark, distant sounding vocals before opening up into a rock ballad influenced middle section (a nod toward Bowie’s older work) which then makes a well executed build and transition back into the original theme. Also a strong presence is Donny McCaslin’s saxophone playing. His smooth horn line provides the backbone of the album’s second single “Lazarus,” along with Bowie’s poignant lyricism (“I’ll be free,” likely in reference to his impending death). Also notable is his part on “Tis A Pity She Was A Whore,” which is nicely reminiscent of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” and adds to the track’s unstable, frenetic feeling.
This all provides backing to Bowie’s powerful vocal performance, excellent writing and his lyricism, which meditates strikingly on his life and oncoming death, with an approach ranging from abstract to brutally direct with lines such as “I’m dying too” in “Dollar Days.”

Overall the album, while surprising in direction, is an extremely compelling listen and in its unique way provides a fitting closure to Bowie’s career, mirroring the many artistic changes he made over the years, such as his decision to abandon the Ziggy Stardust character and move in a new direction as The Thin White Duke. The album seems to say “this is my last shot, might as well try something new” and in doing so triumphs, instead of competing for space with the rest of Bowie’s music, Blackstar breaks new ground, and in doing so feels like a fitting final chapter.