the next day - the return of david bowie

I had never expected to hear anything new from David Bowie; I would have put good money him never releasing any new material ever again, and I'd resigned myself a few years back to the fact that he'd clearly retired. So this was a huge shock. The first listen to "Where Are We Now?" play was approached with quite some trepidation and to be honest I was slightly disappointed on first listen. It doesn't immediately grab your attention and I think my expectations were way too high.

But after just the second play something clicked in my brain and I realised that it was genuinely one of the most marvellous recordings I'd heard for quite some time. There's a quiet restrained dignity about it, a lack of pretension and flashiness that's both disarming and charming. And there are a couple of points which actually choked me up a bit. The understated emotion shines through the more you hear the song. And although you may read in the ill-informed press that Bowie's voice is not what is was, well I would strongly disagree with that. His vocal is actually very reminiscent of "Thursdays Child", the lovely, and similarly vulnerable, single from 1999. Both songs have Bowie singing in a slightly weary, melancholy manner. But this is clearly deliberate - it's not a showy vocal, it's intentionally low key, he's acting the song, like he's done so many times before, and if you listen to the end of the song there's absolutely no doubt that he hasn't actually lost any of the power in his voice - so pooey to the stupid hacks and the doubters!

Unsurprisingly it most closely resembles the sound on Heathen and Reality, Bowie's previous two albums, both produced by Tony Visconti and featuring many of the same musicians. The textures, the way Bowie's voice is recorded, the guitar sounds - they all expand upon techniques used by Visconti on tracks like Reality's "The Loneliest Guy" (another song with a faltering and hesitant vocal, deliberately sung in this vulnerable manner by a man in full control), or Heathen's "I Would Be Your Slave".
 

To strengthen my conviction that his voice was undiminished by time I looked at the testimony of producer Tony Visconti, who spent two years on the new album. He says that Bowie still has one of the strongest voices he's ever worked with in a studio, and that Bowie's health is extremely good. That's good to know, as the rumours - based on absolutely no proof whatsoever - over the past few years have saddled David with everything from a stroke to cancer. Visconti expressed some surprise that this song was chosen as the lead single for the album, as it is rather atypical of the rest of the album. But, Visconti noted with a smile, as always David does just what he wants and it always works out fine.

And the video was oddly compelling, and decidedly weird. And as such, it's very Bowie. Towards the end there are a couple of shots of DB standing in a messy art studio looking rather serious, but somehow, at 66 he still manages to look so damn cool that the first time I saw this I broke into such a big grin.

By tea time on that first day the song was number one in the iTunes charts! - so pooey also to the Biebers and the Rihannas - here's a proper song, played by real people and sung by a man who needs no autotune. Aside from the song itself, I think what really wowed commentators is that it came completely out of nowhere. The secrecy surrounding the new project was brilliant. Absolutely no-one knew anything until the video was distributed. In an age where Lady Gaga is giving you minute-by-minute updates via Twitter on what hat she's going to wear ('do I choose the one shaped like a toilet or the one made of beef??'), DB has recorded an entire album and NO ONE KNEW. Who else could pull this off?

 

Then the album, The Next Day came out in March. 

I know I’m biased, and I’d probably have liked almost anything Bowie came up with after ten years of silence, but really, objectively, this is such a fresh sounding, exciting, exhilarating record that it genuinely doesn’t sound like an album recorded by a 66 year old. I hope all the rumours of ill health that have dogged Bowie over the past few years are just that, or at the very least any ill health is now behind him, because on the evidence of The Next Day there’s so much more creativity and life in him yet. 14 tracks, all of equally high standard, every one a little gem, and every one intensely different from the others. It’s like 14 different facets of Bowie. Plus there's 4 more bonus tracks to be had, and they are all pretty damn good too.

On first listen I was totally entranced, and my smile grew wider and wider as the album progressed. There’s so much going on - on every song there are dozens of little nods to the past, great fun for a seasoned Bowie fan like me, yet there is absolutely no wallowing in past glories. And it grows with every listen. Every new play reveals more and more. This is an urgent album, demanding your complete attention, and it positively bristles with invention. Most of the songs are around the three / four minute mark, they are all tight, concise, no filler, no flab. Some tracks have the most fantastic backing vocals, others have stonkingly heavy guitar work, some have bizarre rhythms and frantic drumming, and all have some of the best vocals that DB has ever committed to tape.

"Where Are We Now?" had attracted a lot of press comments about how tremulous Bowie’s voice sounded. As I suspected this was intentional, Bowie was acting the song – the rest of the album finds him really belting out some tracks – for example, the angry title song opens the album with a massive burst of energy and a cracking vocal - ‘here I am, not quite dying’ snarls DB in what is surely a dig at all those who’d written him off.

I could waffle on all day about how much I love this record but here are some of the highlights -

the deceptively catchy "Valentine’s Day" has one of the sweetest melodies on the album, yet the lyrics deal with a kid shooting his classmates at school… the closing "Heat" which is moody and mysterious and is as close to Scott Walker as DB has ever come. Musically this song could have fitted onto Scott’s Climate Of Hunter.

Elsewhere there are a couple of frantically loopy songs – "If You Can See Me" seems to have every musician playing at a different speed with Bowie spitting out the vocal, yet unaccountably it all hangs together and it really sticks in your brain. And "How Does The Grass Grow?" finds Bowie la-la-ing the melody from the Shadows’ "Apache", which ought to be very silly, but comes over as weirdly sinister. Then there are the more straightforward songs like "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" or "You Will Set The World On Fire" which ROCK and slower pieces like the sinister "Dirty Boys" which is over far too quickly, or the Low-esque "Love Is Lost" which is full of Eno-style squelchy drums. "I’d Rather Be High" has a chorus that sounds like the most 1960s chorus ever, yet the verses have angular, very Tom Verlaine-esque guitars.

The band is magnificent. Bowie has used a small group of tried and tested musicians, people he knew he could rely on entirely. Earl Slick and Gerry Leonard combine to become every guitarist Bowie has ever worked with, plus a whole load that he hasn’t – here there’s a Frippian sound, over there a bit of Reeves Gabrels, or a dash of Belew, or a Mick Ronson lick. But it’s all new, so very fresh and it’s genuinely thrilling stuff.

The drumming is superb – Zachary Alford takes the lion's share, but Bowie stalwart Sterling Campbell also anchors a number of songs – Sterling has worked with Bowie for nearly 20 years, and the links go further back as his drum teacher was none other than Dennis Davis, Bowie’s drummer from Young Americans to Scary Monsters.

On bass we have the ever-wonderful Gail Ann Dorsey on most songs, with Tony Levin on a couple and producer Tony Visconti on another. Bowie himself plays a bit of guitar, and most of the keyboards, and apart from the odd saxophone overdub or strings session that was pretty much it. A small group playing much of the material live in the studio.

I bought the CD, from a real shop. I walked back to work feeling absurdly pleased with myself that I’ve bought every Bowie album since Let’s Dance (30 years ago almost to the day) on the day of release. I’ve no idea why that’s important but it somehow makes me feel good… even having the streamed version prior to the actual release date didn't reduced the excitement of picking up The New David Bowie Album off the shelf. And those are words I never thought I’d be typing in 2013.

Of course I bought the deluxe edition with the bonus tracks. These are very much bonus pieces – they probably wouldn’t fit on the album anywhere else, but I’m slightly disappointed that they’ve been added onto the end (rather than occupying a bonus disc) as they kind of spoil the brilliant ending that "Heat" provides. The darkness and mystery of "Heat" will be somewhat spoiled by the jaunty swing of "So She" which now follows.

But these are minor (and fixable) quibbles. The music itself is astonishing, the singing is even more astonishing considering the 10 year lay off, and the lyrics are by turns dark and troubling, witty and playful, and densely opaque – as all the best Bowie lyrics always are.

The sleeve design, with its rework of the "Heroes" sleeve, has grown on me, but the fold out lyric sheet is incredibly hard to read - doesn’t Bowie realise that some of us are getting on a bit and our eyesight isn’t what it used to be!

Probably the best thing about this album is that it sounds so very David Bowie, all the little touches of past Bowie songs are whooshed up into a sound which is partly new, partly familiar, but completely Bowie. It couldn’t be anyone else. As I said, every track is tremendous, every track is unique and every track is a brilliant experience. This may not be Bowie’s best album – there are just too many other candidates for that title – but it’s certainly up there with the best. I really, genuinely, mean that.

Welcome back, David, it's so good to have you back in my life again!