FEATURE:
I Can't Give Everything Away
David Bowie’s Final Masterpiece: Inside the Stunning Blackstar
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THE name of the final track on…
David Bowie’s Blackstar, I Can’t Give Everything Away, seems to define the album as a whole. Released on 8th January, 2016, not only did people not know much about the album and what it would sound like, but we lost Bowie only two days later from cancer. There was no announcement of his illness so, when he was making this album knowing his cancer was terminal, it must have been devastating knowing people would receive this phenomenal album and, after brief celebration, there would be worldwide devastation. The album was largely recorded in secret between the Magic Shop and Human Worldwide Studios in New York City with Bowie's long-time co-producer, Tony Visconti, and a group of local Jazz musicians – comprising saxophonist Donny McCaslin, pianist Jason Lindner, bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Mark Guiliana. For his twenty-fifth and final studio album, Bowie wanted to get away from Rock and styles that he had covered before. He and producer Visconti were listening to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly and were inspired by the fact that album is not a conventional Hip-Hop release – and they must have been intrigued by its deployment of Jazz sounds throughout. Although Blackstar is very much the work of David Bowie, I think the different genres he splices together is amazing. There is still Rock to be heard on Blackstar, but it is more experimental and industrial in its sound.
Together with some incredible Jazz, it is another case of the ever-changing Bowie being influenced by new sounds and directions. It is a shame that we will never get a follow-up to this amazing album. With musical elements of Boards of Canada, Death Grips, and D’Angelo, Blackstar was one of Bowie’s most experimental album in years. I think another tragedy about the bittersweet nature of Blackstar is that Bowie was on a fine run of form. 2013’s The Next Day was another surprise-released album and it got some incredible reviews. I can imagine Bowie in his seventies still making music and maybe trying something completely different. Rather than wonder what could have been and lament his loss, let us concentrate on one of Bowie’s most emotional and affecting albums. We can read some of the lyrics about him accepting death and mortality; there is a lot of foreboding through the songs but, even though he was very ill whilst recording, I think we get some truly incredible vocal performances. With seven tracks on the album, there are no wasted moments - and each song is over four minutes in length (the title track, which opens the album, is nearly ten minutes long). I am going to bring in a couple of reviews for Blackstar in a minute. The album gained a positive reaction and, whilst most critics were judging the album upon its release and prior to Bowie’s death, I wonder whether they would upgrade their scores when that news hit. I think Blackstar is an album that reveals itself across multiple listens and, since 2016, I have been spinning it a lot.
On 10th January, it will be five years since Bowie died - and I want to put out five features that address a different album/aspect of him. The BBC are celebrating the icon’s work in a series of shows, Bowie Five Years On, and it will bring his music to new people – it will also be sad to know that he is not with us anymore. I am going to finish off with a couple of reviews – one from 2016, and the other written last year. When they assessed the magnificent Blackstar, this is what Entertainment Weekly had to say:
“Nearly every track on Blackstar is strange and unnerving, almost wraithlike, but beautiful too; threaded through with elements of elegantly skronked-out jazz, serrated guitar lines, and swooning orchestral flourishes. (Longtime collaborator Tony Visconti is billed as coproducer, and a cadre of young jazz-world luminaries appear, including Donny McCaslin, Ben Monder, and Mark Guiliana.) The dreamy, multilayered “Lazarus” sounds like some gorgeous song-Frankenstein strung together from disparate but oddly complementary scraps of history: part smoky Weimar cabaret circa 1933, part Tortoise studio session circa 1993. “Sue or In a Season of Crime” is galloping and urgent, a cracked domestic dream of determined reassurances (“I’ve got the job/We’ll buy the house”; “The clinic called/The X-ray’s fine”) that turn desperate and vaguely murderous when Sue leaves the narrator for another man. “Girl Loves Me” is a slow, delicious spiral into nonsense and stomping melody whose only clear lyrical takeaway is the indignant refrain: “Where the f— did Monday go?” (Anyone looking for a little Victorian storytelling with their sadomasochism might like the arch, giddy, and wildly saxophoned“’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” even more).
PHOTO CREDIT: Jimmy King
Lines can be drawn from Blackstar back to Space Oddity and Aladdin Sane, the three-piece-suit-on-MTV ’80s and the industrial darkness and moody experiments of the ’90s and ’00s. But Bowie has never been much of a nostalgic or a self-mythologizer; he can’t be, really, when his vision beams so consistently in one direction: forward. Maybe that’s why Blackstar feels so vital, and arguably better than anything he’s done in years. There are more than enough narratives to follow down the rabbit hole here, and themes and imagery so dense they could probably be dissected for days or even weeks. Most of all, though, it’s the kind of album that works beautifully as a physical experience — an all-senses headphone surrender to the sound of an artist who is older and almost definitely wiser but still fantastically, singularly himself”.
I think, when the BBC and other celebrate the life of David Bowie and look back on his enormous legacy, albums like Blackstar will play a very big part. I will explore Bowie’s influence on the music industry and his different personnas in days to come but, to finish off, I want to bring in an AllMusic review from last year:
“David Bowie died within days after the January 8, 2016 release of Blackstar, an event that immediately shaped perceptions of his 25th album. Unbeknownst to all but his inner circle, Bowie wrote and recorded Blackstar after receiving word that he had liver cancer, so the album was certainly shaped through the prism of this diagnosis. A close listen reveals how the album is littered with references to dying -- indeed, it concludes with a note of acceptance in "I Can't Give Everything Away" -- but Bowie's remarkable achievement with Blackstar is how it's an album about mortality that is utterly alive, even playful.
Unlike its predecessor, 2013's The Next Day, Blackstar doesn't carry the burden of ushering a new era in Bowie's career. Occasionally, the record contains a nod to his past -- two of its key songs, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore," were even aired in 2014 as a supporting single for the Nothing Has Changed compilation (both are revamped for this album) -- but Bowie and producer Tony Visconti are unconcerned with weaving winking postmodern tapestries; now that they've shaken free their creative cobwebs, they're ready to explore. Certainly, the luxurious ten-minute sprawl of "Blackstar" -- a two-part suite stitched together by string feints and ominous saxophone -- suggests Bowie isn't encumbered with commercial aspirations, but Blackstar neither alienates nor does it wander into uncharted territory. For all its odd twists, the album proceeds logically, unfolding with stately purpose and sustaining a dark, glassy shimmer. It is music for the dead of night but not moments of desolation; it's created for the moment when reflection can't be avoided. Fittingly, the music itself is suspended in time, sometimes recalling the hard urban gloss of '70s prog -- Bowie's work, yes, but also Roxy Music and, especially, the Scott Walker of Nite Flights -- and sometimes evoking the drum'n'bass dabbling of the '90s incarnation of the Thin White Duke, sounds that can still suggest a coming future, but in the context of this album these flourishes are the foundation of a persistent present.
PHOTO CREDIT: Jimmy King
This comfort with the now is the most striking thing about Blackstar: it is the sound of a restless artist feeling utterly at ease not only within his own skin and fate but within his own time. To that end, Bowie recruited saxophonist Donny McCaslin and several of his New York cohorts to provide the instrumentation (and drafted disciple James Murphy to contribute percussion on a pair of cuts), a cast that suggests Blackstar goes a bit farther out than it actually does. Cannily front-loaded with its complicated cuts (songs that were not coincidentally also released as teaser singles), Blackstar starts at the fringe and works its way back toward familiar ground, ending with a trio of pop songs dressed in fancy electronics. This progression brings Blackstar to a close on a contemplative note, a sentiment that when combined with Bowie's passing lends the album a suggestion of finality that's peaceful, not haunting”.
Blackstar is one of my favourite albums of the 2010s and, having been a fan of David Bowie for many years, I think enough time has passed so that I can appreciate the album on its own terms - rather than associating it with a musician who was close to death and this was his last gift to us. As we remember David Bowie on the fifth anniversary of his death (10th January), I know a lot of people will be highlighting various albums and sharing their thoughts regarding a musical genius. Although Bowie may have released better albums than Blackstar, I think his twenty-fifth studio album…
IS among his absolute finest.