BLACKSTAR

Today's news gives this album a whole new meaning. This may just be the greatest last hurrah of any artist that I have come across. Every song now reeks of foreboding and an acceptance of what's to come. To my ears, there isn't a week track here and for that reason alone it is the first album Bowie has done that can truly be said to be "his best since Scary Monsters". The stand outs for me are "Lazarus", "Sue (or in a season of crime)" and "I can't give everything away". Echoes of earlier work are present but this is an ultimately modern record. Not sounding quite like anything else he has done, this in itself makes it more Bowie-esque than anything he has done in a very long time. Clearly aware of his own mortality, Bowie has managed to create a send-off album that can rightly sit shoulder to shoulder with the greats of not his own career but of popular music. A beautiful, melancholy, heart-breaking, musically-spellbinding send off for one of the few true music legends. A man like no other and an album like no other. May he rest in peace.