David Bowie - The Next Day [March 11th 2013 in The Courier]

No-one expected it. On the day of his 66th birthday, David Bowie released a single; a present from him to us on his birthday, clearly unaware of how birthdays actually work. He’d been gone for about a decade, recording an album in secret for the past two years. So closely guarded was this secret that we only first heard about it when the aforementioned single ‘Where Are We Now?’ was released on his birthday, about two months before The Next Day was to be released.

 Of course, the announcement of his return was met with joy and uncertainty in equal measure. As critically acclaimed as Bowie is, he’s had a patchy career. We try to forget the whole Tin Machine era and a few of his later albums failed to hit the mark that his ‘one fantastic album every year throughout the ‘70s streak did. And ‘Where Are We Now?’ wasn’t exactly a ‘Sound and Vision’, which sent people into a bit more of a fluster. It was intriguing, featuring Bowie pining for his Berlin days, hinting at a raw, autobiographical feel to The Next Day but had it been released during his career, as opposed to alongside the flurry of excitement at his return, it would’ve been passed off as just OK.

Luckily, ‘Where Are We Now?’ is unrepresentative of the album we actually have. In fact, plonked right in the middle, it feels a bit out of place. Other than cementing the theme – that of mortality and, as in the wonderful ‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’, excess – it’s a lot slower and more reserved, with Bowie’s wispy voice leading the way. The rest of the album does everything it can to escape the notion, implied by that first single, that Bowie’s getting on a bit. In fact, The Next Day acts as a sort of exhibition: The Life and Times of David Bowie.

Echoes of nearly every single Bowie era are here, unexpected from man who would rather explore than hark back to the past. It’s exciting to hear the sonic references; ‘Valentine’s Day’ could quite easily have been ripped straight from Aladdin Sane, and ‘You Feel So Lonely You Could Die’ reflects Ziggy Stardust’s ‘Five Years’.  We have strangely industrial tunes in ‘I Can See You’, and the occasional rock stomper such as ‘How Does Your Grass Grow?’.

While it’s no Young Americans or Low, it still has all the excitement that you found in those albums for the first time. Each track references the past but stamps its own identity on the Bowie chronology, unrelenting in their ability to continue carving a new path whilst also looking back at the path they’ve already created in a way that only someone like Bowie could do.

This is how you make a comeback: not with a whimper but with a massive, massive bang.

4 1/2 / 5
Recommended download: 'How Does Your Grass Grow?'