David Bowie has released a new album. Announced in January on the artist's 66th birthday and released two months later, The Next Day has come out of nowhere. It might as well have come from Mars. What are we earthlings to make of it?
For so long Bowie seemed a spent force. Much respected as one of the most innovative rock pioneers (aka dinosaurs), he had nevertheless finally reached the status of an artist whose impact and relevance belonged in Music History 101. The rock 'n' roll boneyard. Since the Reality album in 2003 all had been deathly quiet.
With his health an ongoing cause for whispered speculation following a minor heart attack in 2004, stories emerged of the ex-glitter-clad, gender-bending Starman contentedly settling down to a corduroy third-age with a cup of tea and a life of familial domesticity. So many people, myself included, believed that Bowie had retired but hadn't, and wouldn't, make any formal announcement.
But now, BANG! The joke is on us. After that decade-long silence, Bowie has ambushed everyone with his 24th studio album. Recorded in secrecy utilising the services of several of his now familiar cast of backing musicians - killer players one and all - and with his old mate Tony Visconti co-producing, the album has sold like hotcakes and received rave reviews.
Indeed the very feat of launching the album with such ''BOO!'' impact is an extraordinary accomplishment. Sneaking up behind the entertainment industry in today's digi-info-prying-leak-laden world is a masterstroke. But then, how very Bowie. He always was a scene-stealer. (Never work with children or animals ... or Bowie.)
In the 1970s a new Bowie album was BIG news. In 2013, The Next Day has returned the artist to the rank of headline-grabber. ''The Greatest comeback album in rock 'n' roll history.''claimed The Independent's Andy Gill, to quote just one five-star descriptor.
As a '70s teenager he was to me what the Beatles, Stones and Dylan had been to the generation before. Bowie helped millions of young people make sense of their world, inviting us to view personality and gender as playful and fluid, to view technology with excitement but also suspicion, to see celebrity as a glorious fabrication ... and that's just for starters. He was also a sexy, uber-cool, trend-setting operator with more role-model potency than four truckloads of All Blacks. But that was then and this is now.
What no rock fan ever wants to experience is the Elvis factor; that is, seeing one's hero become a caricature of his former self, going through the motions with, (shudder) ... irrelevance. We want no rock 'n' roll suicide from Mr Bowie. He's already been there in the Ziggy Stardust masterpiece of 1972, poking fun at the concept and then leaving it behind. So please, let's never see that particular instalment of his art replicated in real life. As you can see, there is so much riding on this belated release it's positively knee-knocking.
So, how good is The Next Day? Well, for starters, the album cover is controversial and disturbing. Great! In a manner reminiscent of how he dealt to dear old Major Tom in Ashes to Ashes, here Bowie revisits and subverts Heroes, the 1977 album that many critics and fans alike regard as his piece de resistance. A large white square is sacrilegiously superimposed over that much-revered cover, obliterating Bowie's face and carrying the new album title in stark black letters. Heroes is still visible but is aggressively crossed out with a thick black line. What's Bowie up to?
In this age of digital downloading, ''album cover'' is almost an obsolete term. The beautiful 124 x 124 canvas that once symbiotically represented the music within, such as existed in the day of Heroes, is largely a cultural artefact. Is Bowie highlighting and lamenting the fact that care need no longer be taken over album art now that music has all but lost its visual bedmate?
Another reading of the cover is that Bowie is denying the existence of heroes. However, given that the original title was set within quotation marks, he's already cracked that joke long ago. There are almost certainly myriad other meanings to be read into the cover. But again, that's Bowie for you.
And so to the music. The superbly named Kitty Empire, of The Guardian, described it as ''a dense, angry, complex rock album''. It is. Even the song titles are uncomfortable; Dirty Boys, Love is Lost, I'd Rather Be High, You Feel So Lonely You Could Die. Fourteen tracks (three extra on the deluxe edition) take the listener deep into the mind of an artist anything but spent.
The tracks are spiky, contain much hard-rock instrumentation, and are predominantly upbeat and in-your-face. As suggested by the cover, The Next Day is highly self-referential; sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle. The distinctive Five Years drum pattern from 1972 appears intact in the coda of You Feel So Lonely You Could Die, while the names of Bowie's favourite haunts in Berlin permeate Where Are We Now?.
There is little overt linkage to the musical style or sound of Heroes, however, and Where Are We Now? is the nearest to a recapitulation. Sonically, the album sits closer to Reality than to any other work. If you play How Does The Grass Grow next to New Killer Star from Reality, the link is clear.
From the opening title track where Bowie sings, ''They can't get enough of that doomsday song'', and ''They can work with Satan while they dress like saints'', it's clear there is no easing up on lyric themes either. While cornerstones such as religion, personality and apocalypse are present, the theme of personal mortality is more evident on this album than before.
''I stumble to the graveyard and I lay down by my parents'', on I'd Rather Be High, or ''Your fear is as old as the world'', on Love Is Lost are but two examples. Given his advancing age this preoccupation is unsurprising. But the manner in which he approaches mortality makes it clear he is not yet comfortable.
And that, in essence, is the great thing about this album. Bowie is still struggling to know who he is, why he is here, and where he is going. He is, therefore, still like many of us. He is flawed, curious, ever-changing, and unwilling to hand over the reins to a god or to anyone else.
''I don't know who I am'', he states in Heat. And that is a good thing. That is why he still has relevance.
The Next Day is far more an electric chair than an armchair. My belief remains intact. I still love you, David Bowie.
Dr Ian Chapman (aka Dr Glam) is an executant lecturer in music at the University of Otago. David Bowie was the subject of both his master's and PhD theses, and he frequently writes about aspects of Bowie's work in a variety of international forums.
