Anticipate David Bowie's BLACKSTAR

This album is much better than Outside and Next Day. I guess I wish it was a little looser, given the players, because it's sort of arranged a la cheesy programming where it probably could have otherwise breathed and swinged a tad more. Sounds weirdly dated, though, per Kirk Hammett, if it sounded more like present then it would be dated to now, man.

heh, can you elaborate on that hammett approach?

It's from the Monster doc. They try to convince him to drop the guitar solos, because no one has solos anymore, and Lars is worried they would make the band sound dated. And Kirk gets indignant and points out losing the solos would date the band to that particular era, when no one had solos.

oh my god. this is so fucking good. ridiculously brilliant album.

can't wait, very excited

This album is much better than Outside

at first i was like :| bc i love outside but now that i'm hearing it it really might be

closing track 'i can't give everything away' is my favorite on first listen but this is very surprising, it's really the best Bowie albums I've heard in decades.

^^sounds like what he was aiming for on Black Tie White Noise but getting it right this time.

xp josh, now I remember - good one

6/10

I am officially excited.

^^sounds like what he was aiming for on Black Tie White Noise but getting it right this time.

Blackstar White Noise

It is really good. A little embarrassing that he's still pulling lyrics from A Clockwork Orange in 2016, but whatever.

The song at the end especially reminds me of Black Tie White Noise. I like both albums, though, but I can see how this one's more focused.

Nice to see BTWN defenders. I've felt like an outlier for 20 years.

BTWN also had sort of surprisingly conservative arrangements, iirc, lots of boring drums (loops?) in particular.

Will always defend "The Wedding," "Jump They Say," "Miracle Goodnight," "You've Been Around," and the Scott Walker cover.

^co-sign on those. I also have a soft spot for "Pallas Athena", that's all.

i like tin machine & i vote

"i can't give everything away" is stunning and that synth tone is really "secret garden"

Good Jody Rosen review: http://www.billboard.com/articles/review/6836029/david-bowie-blackstar-album-review

"The combined effect is goth, in the sense that Chartres Cathedral is goth: The song is a grand edifice, ornamented with spires and gargoyles, with towering vaults beneath which the music echoes and howls."

hell yeah

seeing the woodmansey/visconti "man who sold the world" thing tonight in nyc. wonder if we'll get a chance to sing to the birthday boy.

The guitar solo that closes the album, my god...

"Dollar Days" is such a beautiful pop song.

I got a real John And Beverley Martyn/Witchseason vibe from "Dollar Days" while listening this morning. Could be the way the excellent sax solo is recorded/played. Kind of a "Chime Of The City Clock" feeling. Yeah - wonderful song.

all of this sounds like it is time to play the meat beat manifesto remix of 'you've been around'

(ftr : i love the BTWN album - the mix of commercial demands vs the need to be avant is dominant throughout the album. the result is one of bowies most unusual albums.)

I like the slinky bassline and horns that drift in the beginning of Lazurus, feels like some unknown common ground between Portishead and Steely Dan is being staked out

Most of the lyrics are very bleak. Can we consider this Bowie's first goth album? Even the closing song sounds macabre.

And it's the most upbeat song in here.

yep, this is great

KMUW's "Strange Currency" is streaming an hour of Bowiesongs, back and forth through the years, just finished a tight, crispy "Waiting For The Man." 'Appy birf, Bo.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYO0zbqU0AAkD_2.jpg

Right now: "I suppose it was always this way/But the memories won't quit/'Til they tell a story."

Fantastic album.

If you buy the CD, don't try to remove the small square sticker affixed to the back cover (under the shrinkwrap) as it'll just destroy the finish.

So this band is performing at the Village Vanguard on January 24 (under keyboardist Jason Lindner's name, not McCaslin's). Over/under on Bowie showing up?

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2016/1/5/1452000864501/StephenCollinscartoon21June.jpeg

ahahah fuck thats amazing

Over/under on Bowie showing up?

he was a no-show at the highline last night. visconti said he was at his birthday party, which stands to reason. he recorded the audience singing happy birthday on his cell. really fun show, though, with woodmansey and co. can't imagine anyone was disappointed. the heaven 17 guy did a tremendous job on vocals.

When the David Bowie exhibit was at the MCA last year, there was all this talk about whether Bowie would show up. And I kept thinking, you morons, why would Bowie go to the Bowie exhibit, let alone one he supposedly already saw in London?

Sax solos are downright Sanbornian on this imo

he was a no-show at the highline last night.

Yeah, but that's basically a David Bowie tribute band, even if some of the musicians used to work with him. The Vanguard gig is the entire band that he hired to perform on his own latest album, less than 3 weeks after that album's release.

man that lazarus music video hits really hard, especially today

Most of the lyrics are very bleak. Can we consider this Bowie's first goth album? Even the closing song sounds macabre.

holy shit i think we know why now. rip brilliant brilliant man.

If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to
It’s nothing to me
It’s nothing to see

I guess it's easy to feel the push and pull of death everywhere on this album now, but cannot see those English evergreens as anything but churchyard yews, or failing that the horrific clipped hollies and cypresses of our dismal, dreamy suburban crematoria. What other evergreens do we even have to call our own?

it'll be amazing if that show in a few weeks really is an instrumental run through of this album.

the Lazarus video pushed me over the edge into utter bleak depression over this

I listened to this earlier. I think I like it more than any other Bowie I've heard, which sounds daft, but there you go - I was never quite his biggest fan, but this...this is quite something

yeah, it's so good. what a note to go out on. and the title track is probably my favorite bowie song since ashes to ashes. just a stunning thing to create as you're dying from cancer.

closing track 'i can't give everything away' is my favorite on first listen

Verse of this is very Jacques Brel... or possibly Scott Walker.

I have quite a few Bowie recs/cds, but the only one I ever bought 'new' on contemporaneous release was the "Let's Dance" Cassette single. My sister is ahead of me on that score, she bought the double album "Greatest Hits", and saw him in concert in Turkey with Tin Machine.

(I have got the "Zeit" set, the Station to station 3CD, and hmm, some 2nd hand albums and a couple of recshop cheapies)

Still, the discussion pre-release was such that I was very tempted to get "BlackStar", in that it reminded me of the "Kid A" vibe around it.

Of course, it's now completely different.