#1996 David Bowie - Blackstar

I date these things by the listen date. So I first heard this before Bowie passed, am now reviewing it after, creating an impossible gulf. I think back - up till January 7 it was easy to think that Bowie would keep putting out messy, interesting, muddled records forever; that he'd always at least tease us with that talent. That he'd strangely always be there, like Jagger, like Cash.

In your mind isn't Cash still here somehow?

And then January 8th, that rush. Bowie creating something so swirling and dark, that taps right into the Brainfeeder/Kamasi/Kendrick thing that's been bubbling bubbling bubbling. This vital, enveloping, uncanny cloud. That paranoia and fear felt like ours, a Radiohead-level tapping of our anxieties, asking where the fuck did the Monday go, that suffocation, but strange starlight through the blackness. Radiohead's unavoidable, a cloud of Amnesiac's lurching, King of Limbs' skitter and drone, that pique of unexpected thrill, of being wrapped up in breathplay terrorgrip exhilaration, oily and dark, sucked down like Yar // Riker into some thing that knows beyond.

Am I just overcorrecting when I retroactively heard something hopeful on that Friday afternoon?

But then that Monday and I heard on the radio, watched news pour down my feed. Where the fuck.

And now it all looks different, those cries of I'm dying [to?/too?] on Dollar Days, the things you can't give away, the xrays and home of Sue, he died and another cried, lines and lines and lines that you can sink into right to the end.

It's a dark, gorgeous album that envelops, full of strange angles that I'm still stumbling through. It feels effortlessly brought into being, maybe though that clarity of having nothing left to lose, a lurching record with an irrefutable life of its own.

=====

Bowie's final days, at least to the outside world, have been nothing but grace. Striking videos, manic//carefree smiles, a humble unattended cremation, and a secret taken right to the end. No farewell tickertape, no victory lap, just...*poof*, a classic magic trick. Talking with other fans we remark how cool Bowie was, 69 years old and right to the end. It's hard not to see the album as an extension of that trick, the smoke that tied up our minds while the man slid offstage.

Cheers Bowie, you'll be missed 4.5/5