David Bowie just released a ten minute song, so I wrote a review of it
Oh hey what’s up David Bowie? How are you doing my pal? Are
you doing well? It’s been a minute—two years, really, since you dropped that
come back album, The Next Day.
Remember that? Yeah it was a’ight. It had some pretty dope jams on it if I
recall correctly—
Oh what’s this? You have a new album coming out, in January,
on your birthday? Well that’s pretty cool that you are opting to #bless us all
once again with new music. Is there anything you can tell me about your new
album?
It’s called Blackstar,
huh? But stylized by one big black star? Well that’s interesting, I suppose. Is
there anything else you can divulge right now? The title track is ten minutes
long, and that’s the album’s first single?
Oh weird.
Well let me take a listen to it and watch this video you
made for it—
OH SHIT DAVID BOWIE WHAT IN THE FUCK? What happened to your
eyes my dude? Why are you writhing around like a Pan’s Labyrinth motherfucker in this video? Do you not realize that
this is, like, some straight up terrifying shit here that you are asking people
to watch? WHY ARE THOSE PEOPLE GYRATING TO THIS ARRYTHMIC BEAT? WHAT IS
HAPPENING IN THIS SONG?
Whooooooo boy.
Where do we begin with “Blackstar,” the titular track from
David Bowie’s new, forthcoming album?
First, I should say, jokes aside, it’s great that Bowie is
still making music, and making music only two years after The Next Day, an album that arrived, unceremoniously, after a
decade of dormancy.
The Next Day was a
relatively accessible listen—leaning more towards latter day Bowie in its sound
and format, meaning, it was not, like, super weird or anything. Bowie hasn’t
been super weird since 1995’s Outside,
a high concept album about a world where murder is considered an art form, and
he was, like, a detective or some shit trying to solve a case. I think. I don’t
know. That’s a really weird, unsettling album but it has some pretty good songs
on it like “Strangers When We Meet.”
But I guess when you are nearly 70
years old, it’s a good time to just get really fucking weird again, which is I
think the general conceit for Blackstar
as a whole—an eight song album that all signs say harken back to his artistic
and drugged out peak in the 1970s with albums like Station to Station and Low.
The titular track, and
accompanying video, seem like they are one in the same. The video would be
nowhere near as weird and horrifying to watch without the song, and the song is
still unnerving and jarring, but it’s amplified by the visuals.
“In the villa of Ormen stands a solitary candle,” Bowie sings, his
voice contorted and tremoloy, adding to just how unsettling and confusing this
all is—and it really only gets worse from there when looking at the video.
Bowie, singing with a bandage covering his face, his eyes replaced by two black
dots, writhes along sinisterly, shouting out the lyrics to the song while two
methed out dancers hop along erratically in a room behind him.
And this is only one scene in the
video. There are also horrifying scarecrows, Bowie as some kind of preacher,
holding a book with a black star on the front of it, a dead astronaut with a
bejeweled skull, and more. I mean, the fucking thing is ten minutes long so
there’s a lot to get through—directed by John Renck, the thing is beautifully
shot, but you can only make it through so much of it before you have to ask
yourself what’s the point? What kind of story, if any, is this trying to tell?
Musically, “Blackstar” wastes no
time getting down to business—whatever we are in the business of with this
song. Comparing it to Bowie’s other
10 minute song, “Station to Station,” seems like the logical thing to do, and
with that song, there was a whole lot of build up before Bowie actually arrived
with his “Return of the Thin White Duke,” thing, then it segued into this
post-funk coda. Sure it’s a long song, but it worked—it had direction, and more
importantly, you felt like each part was really leading to something else.
There are distinctive parts to
“Blackstar”—the arrhythmic and erratic introduction eventually makes way for a
sinister, saxophone heavy slink where Bowie talks about what he isn’t, (a lot
of things) and what he is (a blackstar.) And every time his voice chimes in
with “I’m a blackstar,” I have to
wonder if anyone pulled him aside to explain that “black star” is slightly
antiquated slang for heroin.
It seems worth mentioning that
“Blackstar” the song, as a song, benefits greatly from being separated from
“Blackstar” the weird fucked up video. In experiencing the video for the first
time, I was so put off by the visuals that I also started to write the song off
as well. But it’s not that bad. It’s
also not, like, amazing or a revelation by any stretch of the imagination. Once
the really weird “Villa or Ormen” section ends, and the second portion of the
song begins, it’s kind of picks up, and is marginally listenable, even somewhat
catchy, with its repeated theme of “I’m a Blackstar.”
But, unlike “Station to Station,”
it never goes anywhere. It just ends, and just about as erratically as it
began, which makes it a bit of a mystery—as in what kind of larger picture do
the other seven songs on Blackstar
form when listened to from start to finish?
Blackstar arrives on January 8th and is available to preorder from the man himself.
Blackstar arrives on January 8th and is available to preorder from the man himself.
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