By Nick Ubels (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 20, 2013
Pop stardom feeds on youth. When Pete Townsend of The Who penned the line, “Hope I die before I get old,” it’s hard to say whether it was anarchic posturing or a sincerely bleak vision of the middle-aged or, God-forbid, senior rock star trying to reconcile age and disruptive mission statement. These beliefs were only cemented with punk’s lock on youth as a sign of credibility and anti-establishment ethos: don’t trust anyone over 30.
It’s forced the hand of many artists who have become parodies of their youthful versions in old age. The Rolling Stones and Madonna come to mind as once-vital and now cringe-worthy artists who have failed to age gracefully.
The biggest failure of these artists seems to be an inability to acknowledge and adapt to the decades of life between their productive 20s and the present. Paul McCartney tackled his over-65 status with a charming nod and an ear worm melody in writing a remarkable pop record in 2007 about mortality, Memory Almost Full. Fittingly, David Bowie has taken a more serious tack.
His first record in 10 years, The Next Day finds musical chameleon David Bowie reconciling with his past in a more overt manner than the already self-referential singer has ever done before. This is evident from first glance at the album artwork; The Next Day subverts the iconic record sleeve of Bowie’s landmark 1977 art rock record and second movement of the so-called Berlin trilogy, “Heroes,” with a plain white square bearing the new album’s title obscuring the singer’s intent face and framing hands.
It is a transgression against pop history and the backwards-looking, museum-curating tendency of those who strictly subscribe to classic rockism. It is an act of war against the David Bowie mythos, which he forged and destroyed at will throughout his career.
The artwork sets the stage for an album haunted by the past. It acknowledges that memory always bleeds through. It’s an effect much like old recordable cassette tapes that have been used and reused over the years: the ghosts of what used to be imprinted on the tape find gaps and quiet moments to surge through, no matter how hard we try to cover them up.
The Next Day is the spiritual successor to the Berlin trilogy, a series of three dark, ambitious and varied late ‘70s records the artist produced in a city physically divided by Cold War politics. Unexpectedly released on Bowie’s 66th birthday, reflective mid-tempo comeback single “Where Are We Now?” puts none-too-fine a point on this focus. In answer to “Heroes”’ pair of lovers “standing by the wall,” Bowie explains to his former flame/self that he “had to catch the train from Potsdamerplatz/ You never knew that, that I could do that.” Once part of the death zone separating East and West Berlin, Potsdamerplatz is now a thriving centre of international finance and entertainment, with sleek, tall skyscrapers reaching towards the sky. The success of this space is a symbol of a reunited Germany. During the 1970s, it would have been an impossible dream to imagine such a prosperous and bustling square occupying this divided space.
Bowie has always positioned himself as an outsider, whether as Ziggy Stardust, the alien rock idol foretelling humanity’s eminent extinction, or as the emaciated, drug-addled amoral and asexual Thin White Duke. Throughout his career, he’s had on foot in the mainstream pop music world and another in the post-modern art scene, acting as a bridge between the two. In his 2005 biography on the singer, Strange Fascination, David Buckley sums up Bowie’s contribution to popular music in his particular talent for engaging “ideas from outside the mainstream—from art, literature, theatre and film—and to bring them inside …” This position, coupled with a constantly shifting stage persona, destabilizes the identity. Bowie’s effort to address this sense of self is built into the title of the first single, “Where Are We Now?” but it haunts the rest of the album in which Bowie catalogues and refashions the elements of his career, crafting a sort of musical autobiography.
The Next Day sounds most like the Berlin trilogy it responds to, but within that, it also flexes to encompass moments from throughout his 23-album discography. In a way, these references seem to stretch further and further backward with each track. “How Does the Grass Grow?” opens with the same sort of driving rhythm and pitch-shifted guitars of “Heroes” before collapsing into a chorus that recalls Aladdin Sane-era yeah yeah yeah yeah yeahs. The ascending chord changes of the bridge instantly bring to mind the pre-chorus of the 1982 hit duet with Queen, “Under Pressure.”
“You Feel So Lonely You Could Die” is a waltzing guitar-rock ballad that nods to Elvis Presely’s “Heartbreak Hotel” in its borrowed lyric and structurally recalls The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars’ desperate plea of a closer, “Rock and Roll Suicide,” before dissolving into to the very same simple drum riff that opened “Five Years.” While that signature drum riff faded into 1972’s Ziggy Stardust, it fades out here, instead. It was a suprisingly emotional moment for me; “Five Years” remains a favourite track and was my first introduction to Bowie beyond radio staples like “Changes.”
Rather than a pop album, The Next Day is a revisionist collage of elaborate and theatrical chord progressions, quicksilver melodies, melodramatic lead guitar lines, soulful horns, gospel choirs and other half-remembered artifacts of yesteryear colliding uncertainly with the present.
And it was alright.
