Day 1001 - The Next Day

David Bowie “The Next Day” (2013)

So we come to the end of the road, and how appropriate that the list should end with the late-great Mr Bowie.  An artist who transcended genres, genders and seemingly even planets, and was active for nearly all of the decades represented in this list.

This was the first album Bowie had released since 2003’s “Reality” album.  He had suffered a mild heart attack during the tour for that album and had largely slid out of sight.   For his return he decided to make it a surprise, swearing his band to secrecy.   Perhaps he was less confident, it seems to have been a stop-start process.  There were initial jam sessions between Bowie, his producer Tony Visconti and Bowie's drummer, then Bowie sat with those recordings for some time.   They then got back together and Bowie started drafting in his band to flesh out the ideas.

The album was preceded by the single "Where Are We Now?" which seems like a relatively safe choice with its classic Bowie ballad sound.

Much of the rest of the album takes an art-rock approach that seems to simultaneously reference multiple eras of Bowie while also breaking new ground.  There's the Tom Waits-esque bump and grind of "Dirty Boys",  the speedy, quirk of "If You Can See Me" and the baggy-meets-Beatles of "I'd Rather Be High".

There's a bit of saxophone on some tracks like "Boss of Me" which, mixed with the bass guitar, gives the album a pleasing bit of bottom end.

This is a worthy addition to Bowie's catalogue, though I much prefer Bowie's follow-up/final album "Blackstar".  That album seemed to perfect the sound put forward by "Next Day" with some better songs and so much more weight and emotion... (hard to tell if that opinion is coloured by his death or if I would have felt the same otherwise) and also seemed a summation of Bowie's work.