Anticipate David Bowie's BLACKSTAR

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.

"dollar days" answers the question "what if an hours song were actually good?"

"i can't give everything away" is maybe the long-awaited (by probably only me) follow up to "this is not america"

"dollar days" answers the question "what if an hours song were actually good?"

Yes!

Apart from its feeble melodies, the anonymous self-production sank that goddamn album -- to me a worse album than BTWN.

oh it's way worse. the songs are super empty. i find it kinda fascinating though

Xpost I listened to this is not America today and I love that fucking song

I love this plummy version, his full-throated voice to excellent effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUliUWMrMZA

My review of Blackstar.

It's definitely an album that works best listened to all in one go. Which is a real rarity today, with most artists seemingly working from the assumption that the individual tracks on a record are going to get randomised in iTunes/whatever anyway.

Did anyone in a review anywhere predict what happened? ie. take a few listens and go 'oh my god he's telling us he's about to die'? Because it seems so obvious now.

I try to avoid biographical parallels. Lots of similar reviews published when Dylan released Time Out of Mind.

If you look at the RYM page for Blackstar, quite a few reviews from before his death mention it.

There are so many albums where 'oh my god he's telling us he's about to die' and it didn't happen.

Some where the whole thing was artistic, some where the person, um, got better.

Surprisingly, the song with the live drum & bass beat is my least favorite on the album (and the slow songs are the best by far).

Did anyone in a review anywhere predict what happened?

closest thing i've encountered so far was my roommate after the album leaked, coming out of his room and being like "dude, some of these lyrics..."

hours is certainly a worse album than BTWN. Hours has only 'thursday's child' and maybe 'survive' on it, the rest is terrible. some good b-sides though.

Some similarities?

Les Marquises (English: The Marquesas) is Jacques Brel's thirteenth and final album. Also known as Brel, the album was released 17 November 1977 by Barclay (96 010). This was the singer's first album of new songs in ten years and was released a year before his death from lung cancer. The album's themes include death ("Jaurès", "Vieillir", "Jojo"), parting ("Orly") and in several songs Brel evokes his career in the 1960s ("Les F..", "Jojo", "Knokke-le-Zoutte Tango", "Vieillir"). The album was recorded live in Studio B at the Barclay Studios on Avenue Hoche, Paris. With his health failing, Brel was only able to record at most two songs per day. Brel returned to the Marquesas Islands shortly after the recording sessions.

The album was treated with great secrecy before its release and was delivered to reviewers in a reinforced metal box with a timed, electronic padlock to stop them listening to it before its release date. No airplay of the album was allowed and no singles were released until after its release, and there were no interviews or promotion given by Brel regarding the album.

my dad was convinced he was dying when he heard it on Saturday. told me on Sunday that he'd be dead in a year. he nailed it... ever since The Next Day, with the allusions to Alzheimer's on "Where Are We Now?" and the cut-out album cover, and the David Bowie Is exhibition last year, I was convinced he was already dead and this was all a performance piece. mentioned upthread but Courtney Love and Dave Grohl intimated in 2013 that he was seriously ill... after the disappointing last record and hearing how exciting and modern and totally singular Blackstar is, i thought he was on a new roll...

dead *within a year...

closest comparison i immediately made was Zevon's 'The Wind', but that was a different kind of farewell.

there have been lots of albums where 'the specter of death' 'hangs over the proceedings' as 'so and so grapples with their own mortality' and everyone is like "my god oh no". that happened to neil young too, maybe around the time of prairie wind? i don't remember now. and since then of course he's released fifteen more albums and hooked up with daryl hannah.

hours is certainly a worse album than BTWN. Hours has only 'thursday's child' and maybe 'survive' on it, the rest is terrible. some good b-sides though.

i like "if i'm dreaming my life" if i remember it's playing

and since then of course he's released fifteen more albums and hooked up with daryl hannah.

yikes

i hate "dated" as a pejorative but i have to say "the pretty things are going to hell" sounds more dated than all of earthling

whammy bar!

you know I hate 'dated' too but the only definition that works is if it sounded horrible at the time ("The Pretty Things..." did).

i love the changes in the drums in the first 1/3 vs. last 1/3 of the title track. they're skittering at the beginning, then they go away into the weird zone of the middle 1/3, and when they return everything is in simple lockstep, like they've undergone a conversion.

it took me 3 minutes to realize I had two different Bowie youtubes open at once..
'Blackstar' and 'The Heart's filthy lesson'

I don't know what time I started them both but it did overlap quite nicely

Lol

i would start a thread for hours but also there's literally no reason to start a thread for hours. anyway i've listened to it a few times recently bc parts of blackstar remind me of it, as described upthread; disc two of its 2004 reissue is really illuminating, what with the different mixes of "survive," "seven," and "something in the air" which while they don't exactly make the songs feel complete at least fill them out a little; the omikron mixes are pretty uniformly superior to what ended up on the album, probably because hours is kind of the platonic example of an album so overworked it sounds unfinished. at least two of the b-sides ("we shall go to town" and "we all go through") are better and more propulsive and coherent than anything on the record. anyway: huh

i don't remember now. and since then of course he's released fifteen more albums and hooked up with daryl hannah.

― nomar, Tuesday, January 12, 2016 12:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But if you know what life is worth
You would look for yours on earth - Bob Marley

, the song with the live drum & bass beat

there are several songs with "live" drum&bass rhythm section, no?

this isn't an adequate summary of the album but it sounds to me very much like bowie is taking elements from a variety of his past approaches (d&b rhythms, wailing 80s sax, wanking 70s guitar) and mixing them up. i mean i suppose those are all things in his skill set, so it's possible he just 'arrived' at that particular mix, but knowing what we (think we) know about bowie it's hard to imagine this wasn't self-conscious.

also given how some of the reviews emphasized how 'experimental' this album was, some even likening it to recent scott walker, i was surprised by how pop it is, long songs and all (the vocal melodies, the way his voice is mixed, etc etc). that's neither a criticism nor an accolade, it's just my impression.

Listening to the lovely I Can't Give Everything Away this morning, and the ending where he repeats the title over and over, it struck me how there are several readings of the phrase, e.g.:
- there is a limit to how much I can give
- I must not reveal the big secret
- I can't (or don't want to) relinquish this life
- I'm not going to explain what all of this means

And, the way he sings the line, the word "Away" becomes separated, so in the end that's the final statement in itself: "Away... away..." It's really beautiful.

"i am so rich i literally cannot rid myself of this tall coin"