“‘tis my curse I suppose”
The Sunday Times CULTURE supplement has ★ as the album of the week today in the Rock, Pop and Jazz section...an appropriate umbrella for ★ perhaps.
The review, by Dan Cairns, was teased last week with lines such as: “Some of the songs are staggeringly beautiful, vocally he hasn’t sounded this strong for decades.”
It seems an overzealous sub-editor has chopped that particular sentence for this week’s version of the review, but here are some of the surviving observations made by Mr Cairns.
In his unrivalled career, Bowie has teased us – or so we like to believe – with moments when lines between his life and the roles he plays seem to blur. Yet still he eludes us; slippery, unknowable. That these are the qualities that make Bowie so intriguing seems to madden some fans. We can Google an answer to just about anything, after all, so why not Bowie? Well, good luck with that.
This late-period Bowie, more insistent than ever on the right to roam where he will, has delivered another masterclass in experimentation and reinvention. The alt-jazz quartet he saw in a Manhattan club in 2014 clearly touched a nerve; a few days later, their saxophonist received an email from the man himself, and the band’s sprawling playing, which marches in step with breathtaking musicianship and iron discipline, lights a fire beneath Bowie. Vocally, he could be back in 1971-72, recording Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust: when the title track shifts into the major at the halfway point, you struggle to believe you’re listening to a 68-year-old veteran, rather than a fresh-faced torch singer. The effect is hair-raising.
Throughout, Bowie comes across as charged up, focused, both enslaved to and master of the music he is creating. “Everybody knows me now,” he sings on Lazarus. Well, no; no, we don’t. But that’s good, right?
Read the full review here.
#Blackstar #imablackstar #BlackstarAlbum