David Bowie<\/a>, whose final album, \u201cBlackstar\u201d \u2014 written and recorded as he underwent treatment for cancer, and released two days before his death \u2014 was his most innovative and exciting work in 35 years.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cBlackstar\u201d is the final chapter in \u201cI Can\u2019t Give Everything Away,\u201d the sixth and chronologically final installment in the series of career-spanning boxed sets overseen by the man himself in the years before his death. At the core of the set are four studio albums \u2014 \u201cHeathen,\u201d \u201cReality,\u201d \u201cThe Next Day\u201d and \u201cBlackstar\u201d \u2014 recorded at opposite ends of the years between 2001 and 2015 (along with two sprawling live albums and three full CDs of stray songs). The reason, or at least the impetus, for the decade-long hiatus in the middle came when Bowie suffered a heart attack onstage in 2004 toward the end of the exhausting, 112-date \u201cReality\u201d tour and apparently decided he\u2019d had enough.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe first three of those albums are basically a continuation of the creative revival that began with the \u201cOutside\u201d album in 1995. After Bowie\u2019s albums had reached a nadir in the early \u201890s with the hard rock of \u201cTin Machine\u201d and an attempted return to \u201cLet\u2019s Dance\u201d-style pop with \u201cBlack Tie White Noise,\u201d he apparently re-engaged with his muse; not coincidentally, also during this time he got sober, got married and settled in New York. He remained competitive and intensely aware of contemporary alternative music (much of which bore his influence), and consequently, some of those \u201890s albums tried far too hard to fit in with the trends du jour, particularly industrial rock and drum n\u2019 bass.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut by the time of \u201cHeathen,\u201d he wasn\u2019t following any trends, and the album was an unusual combination of driving rock, experimental tracks so low-key they bordered on maudlin, and incongruously sprightly moments like \u201cA Better Future.\u201d Significantly, the album also reunited him with producer Tony Visconti, with whom he\u2019d worked off and on since the mid 1960s, and who would work on everything he recorded after. While uneven, it\u2019s a challenging and moody work.<\/p>\n
\n\tDuring this era, Bowie cast a wide net \u2014 \u201cHeathen\u201d features guest appearances from Pete Townshend and Dave Grohl, and at other points Moby, Air, LCD Soundsystem\u2019s James Murphy and others contributed remixes (the latter was invited to co-produce \u201cBlackstar\u201d but backed out after a couple of sessions, saying he was \u201coverwhelmed\u201d). But he also sprinkled in winking references to his own discography, from the \u201cAbsolute Beginners\u201d-evoking \u201cBa-ba-ba-ooo\u201d backing vocals on \u201cEverybody Says Hi\u201d to the Berlin references in \u201cWhere Are We Now?\u201d and even a blast of \u201cCrack City\u201d in \u201cNever Get Old.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe following \u201cReality,\u201d recorded just a year after \u201cHeathen,\u201d was a much livelier affair that its predecessor, intended to showcase Bowie\u2019s powerhouse live band. There are many more rock songs \u2014 with deliciously distorted guitars and powerhouse drumming \u2014\u00a0and some are among the best of this period, notably \u201cNew Killer Star,\u201d \u201cDays\u201d and the title track.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe following tour \u2014 Bowie\u2019s last \u2014\u00a0is collected on the massive \u201cReality Tour\u201d set, with a whopping 33-song setlist that embodies the above-mentioned challenges of being a later-in-life rock legend: One sequence finds him moving from the mid-\u201870s deep cut \u201cBreaking Glass\u201d to the new \u201cNever Get Old,\u201d followed by \u201cChanges.\u201d Although overstuffed, it\u2019s the definitive career-spanning live Bowie album, and includes a stellar version of \u201cHeroes\u201d that starts off with a rough, guitar-driven arrangement that gradually morphs into the familiar one; by the time of the song\u2019s anthemic coda, it\u2019s hard not to feel a lump in the throat, no matter how many times you\u2019ve heard it in the past.<\/p>\n
\n\tCuriously, although some ten years elapsed between \u201cReality\u201d and the following studio album \u201cThe Next Day,\u201d it\u2019s largely a continuation, with many of the same musicians and a similar combination of unexpectedly driving rock and experimental tracks.<\/p>\n
\n\tYet none of the above hinted at what was coming next. Bowie recorded \u201cBlackstar\u201d while staring his mortality in the face, and the intensity is palpable in every note of the album. Working with jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his ace band, the music is completely different from anything Bowie had done before, often just as driving as the preceding rock albums but much darker \u2014\u00a0particularly the eerie title track, which combines a haunting opening with a glorious middle section that is like the sun parting clouds, until the lyrics come in: \u201cSomething happened on the day he died\/ Spirit rose a meter and stepped aside\/ Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried\/ \u2018I\u2019m a blackstar, I\u2019m a blackstar.\u2019\u201d Images of death and the afterlife are in nearly every song \u2014 one begins, \u201cHere I am up in heaven\u201d \u2014 but the album closes on an upbeat note with \u201cI Can\u2019t Give Everything Away,\u201d which features a distant harmonica and \u201cHeroes\u201d-esque guitar tone (recalling his mid-\u201870s \u201cBerlin\u201d era) and a characteristically contradictory parting line: \u201cSeeing more and feeling less\/ Saying no but meaning yes\/ This is all I ever meant\/ That\u2019s the message that I sent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIt concludes what may be the most remarkable final act of any entertainer\u2019s career: The album was released on January 8th, 2016, his 69th birthday \u2014\u00a0two days before his death. Of course he couldn\u2019t have planned it so specifically, but it\u2019s hard to think of an artist who played themselves off so memorably. It\u2019s an extraordinary final statement.<\/p>\n
\n\tThis era served up so many stray tracks that the \u201cRecode\u201d odds-and-ends compilation that accompanies all of the boxed sets in this series sprawls across three full CDs. Many of them are for completists only (did we really need SACD mixes, if anyone remembers what those are?) but along with the companion EPs that followed his final two albums, highlights include James Murphy\u2019s \u201cSteve Reich mix\u201d of \u201cLove Is Lost\u201d (which incorporates winking elements from \u201cAshes to Ashes\u201d); the Metro remix of \u201cEveryone Says Hi,\u201d with its breezy electronic feel reminiscent of Tame Impala; a wild remix of \u201cDisco King\u201d featuring Tool\u2019s Maynard James Keenan and Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante; an oddball collaboration with Lou Reed called \u201cHop Frog\u201d; and a completely bonkers version of Sigue Sigue Sputnik\u2019s snarky 1986 song \u201cLove Missile F1-11,\u201d one of several unexpected covers from this era including Jonathan Richman\u2019s \u201cPablo Picasso,\u201d the Pixies\u2019 \u201cCactus,\u201d the Kinks\u2019 \u201cWaterloo Sunset,\u201d and \u201cTry Some, Buy Some,\u201d a song George Harrison wrote and produced for Ronnie Spector in 1971 (if nothing else, they show the range of Bowie\u2019s musical tastes).<\/p>\n
\n\tThe set also includes several of his last live performances: three tracks from the Fashion Rocks show in 2005, including two with Arcade Fire (their \u201cWake Up\u201d and his \u201cFive Years\u201d), and most interesting of all, a cover of the early Pink Floyd classic \u201cArnold Layne\u201d with that band\u2019s David Gilmour \u2014\u00a0a parting tribute to Syd Barrett, the song\u2019s writer and original singer, who cast a vast influence on the young Bowie. (His actual last live performance took place in 2006, a version of \u201cChanges\u201d with Alicia Keys at a New York charity event.)<\/p>\n
\n\tBowie\u2019s final chapter found him coming to terms with his own past \u2014\u00a0there might not have been any more hit singles, let alone another \u201cHeroes,\u201d \u201cChanges,\u201d \u201cZiggy Stardust\u201d or \u201cStation to Station,\u201d but he\u2019d found a solid cruising altitude that still gave him room to challenge himself, even as he focused on his family and curating his vast archive in the final decade of his life. The results of that curation have continued to roll out with generous frequency in the years since his death, in the form of multiple live albums, the \u201cMoonage Daydream\u201d film, and, not least, the opening of the David Bowie Centre at London\u2019s Victoria & Albert Museum earlier this week, which is currently displaying a fraction of the 90,000 items the museum acquired from his archive.<\/p>\n
\n\tBowie guarded that archive zealously during his life, often snapping up items that had wandered off when they popped up on eBay or in auctions, and he kept a majority of it out of circulation, presumably in anticipation of what\u2019s happening now: a tasteful and continuous flow of unreleased or recontextualized material that keeps his work in front of the public, and fans eagerly anticipating what\u2019s coming next. In other words, an artfully curated creative afterlife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a brilliant artist of any discipline reaches their twilight years \u2014 which in popular music is one\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[4955,156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-20613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-david-bowie","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}