David Bowie - The Next Day
- Written by Antonio Tzikas
So basically, the world woke up on the 8th January to find a new David Bowie single had suddenly been released, totally out of the blue. It was his first new material for a decade and the first peep out of him for a good while, save for a few red carpet appearances at premieres of his son Duncan Jones' film Moon a few years back.
The single in question, ‘Where Are We Now?’, a rather fragile and melancholic ballad in which Bowie seemingly reminisces over his time in Berlin set to a ghostly piano shuffle, caused much media hype and fanfare that drowned out the actual song. The song, it seemed, didn’t matter, it was the fact that Bowie was back that mattered most, followed by the song, the strange video and the striking, self referential and opinion-dividing artwork that accompanies the album. The master of mystery had done it again, everyone was talking about the image and ideas as much as the music, and not a peep from the man himself. I dare say that this record would be receiving rave reviews no matter what it sounded like, of course it would, it’s probably the biggest occasion in music so far this decade, it’s going to be nigh on impossible for anyone to focus solely on the music, unless they’d literally never heard of David Bowie before.
We must admit we were that teensy bit skeptical at first, that little seed of cynicism that sprouted up when The Stone Roses re-formed and when My Bloody Valentine released their new record; everyone knows Bowie is godlike, untouchable material, untouchable legacy and the only one of his peers that doesn’t relentlessly tour his greatest hits in an embarrassing manner whilst churning out tonnes of forgettable albums. Does he really need to do this? Will it be Tin Machine all over again? Will he have lost it?
The first few seconds of the opener, title track ‘The Next Day’ should just about seal off all debate and supposition surrounding the album. Sounding like it could be straight from Lodger or Scary Monsters, it’s the best opener he could have picked; driving drums, squealing guitars and those vocals. It sets the tone perfectly and helps drive up the anticipation for the rest of the record. Then we come to ‘Dirty Boys’, another slight sonic nod to Lodger and a tale of a gang of cross-dressing young lads smashing things up with cricket bats, followed by the incredible second single ‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’. A mid-tempo track which cements the dystopian and slightly unsettling theme of the record to come.
The mid section of the record continues in the same vein, with an element of classicism in the song structure and writing, coupled with a production aesthetic that harks as far back as the Berlin years and the records of the time, as I’ve mentioned above. The fantastic ‘Valentines Day’ being the only slight exception to the downbeat tone, the almost Kinks-esque opening guitar line and vocal phrasing come as a nice surprise, although producer Tony Visconti revealed the song is actually about a US high school shooting.
Although the record has no obvious linear concept running through it, most songs seem to tell a story of a character quite relevant in today's society: the young solider at war in the desert, the man haunted by obsessive celebrity culture, the school shooter, the rioting teenagers, the lonely life of the city dweller. The Next Day is a collection of Bowie's long overdue comments on modern society, though they never get too deep as to take away from the brilliant tunes they’re based around whilst still exploring their themes fully and cleverly.
The only gripe to be found with the record is its length; at 14 tracks long, and 17 on the ‘Deluxe version’, it’s just that bit too lengthy to make a concise statement. Eight songs would have been perfect here, 10 at most. The 14 tracks just seem to drag the record out for too long as they aren’t particularly short either. Clocking in at around 53 minutes, it’s quite the epic, and though it’s Bowie's comeback and we should be grateful with all the songs we can get, eight tracks would have made a bolder statement.
The power of Bowie’s storytelling and songwriting is just too great to produce anything other than a first rate record, even here in 2013, after ten years out of the game, he sounds fresh, relevant and even prophetic. Coupled with production from old cohort Tony Visconti, The Next Day really does stand up well beside Bowie's past work and proves itself a worthy addition to his canon. Would we be saying this if it was released in 2004? That’s another story. And we're not going to even start on the artwork either.
& via