THE NEXT DAY

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Recorded in secret with musicians sworn to secrecy, The Next Day, the first album from David Bowie in ten years came as a bit of a surprise with no indication that anything was happening until the release of the laid back single Where Are We Now? Itself a bit of a slow burner, taking a few listens before I realised that we may be onto something here. After all, if truth be told, Bowie's released little to get excited about since the early eighties. Living with this for almost 2 weeks now though I can confidently say it's his best body of work since Scary Monsters.

The word was he'd stepped back to his seventies work for influence giving rise amongst many to hopes of something along the lines of Ziggy Stardust. It's clearly not the case and if the cover wasn't a giveaway, a rather cheap copy of Heroes with a large white square containing the album title over it, then a quick listen confirms its nearest reference would be late seventies Heroes and Lodger era. It's a strong collection of songs too with a high percentage of rockers with strong riffs and hooks and only a few ballads. Bowie's on great form vocally too sounding nothing like a man of sixty six. Perhaps down to his near death heart problems ten years back there seems to be a lot of references to death - "Here I am, not quite dying" he sings on the opening title track. Best of the bunch? I'm particularly fond of Love Is Lost with its simple keyboard line and hypnotic drum pattern, the upbeat and spacey I'd Rather Be High, the dark and moody Heat and the Heroes-esque How Does The Grass Grow? And that single's pretty good too. He's assembled a strong band too including some old friends including guitarist Earl Slick and drummer Sterling Campbell and of interest to prog fans, Tony Levin on some tracks too.

Overall then, while this isn't going to compete with his greatest work of the seventies it's nevertheless a fine body of work and far better than I could have dared hope for. I'm more than happy with The Next Day.

The Next Day will go down in history as the David Bowie album that nobody expected. Nobody was even anticipating that Bowie had a new album in the pipeline, and certainly nobody expected Bowie to rediscover his art rock muse this late in the game.

Perhaps those two factors are linked: it is possible that the long delay between Reality and this is a simple factor of the Thin White Duke no longer feeling obliged to record unless he has something truly compelling to offer. Either way, the album finds Bowie off in his own sonic universe to an extent we haven't seen since Scary Monsters: his releases from Let's Dance up to Reality seem to have found him chasing fashion or other people's aesthetics rather than crafting a new aesthetic which was truly his, which was the key to his success in his classic era and which is also the secret ingredient in this album's success.

Combining glitchy bang-up-to-date electronics, some of Tony Visconti's most labyrinthine production techniques yet, vocals which have aged like fine wine and the occasional unexpected twist (check out those 60s throwback ya-yas on How Does the Grass Grow?) and the end result is a strange expedition into territory which is highly experimental even by Bowie's standards. The cover art, though ugly as sin, is also kind of appropriate: the DIY/samizdat approach suggestive of Bowie and his allies sneaking off to create this treasure in secret, and also the allusion to "Heroes" as the last time Bowie got anywhere near this odd on-record. "Heroes", of course, though it sounded otherwordly on realease now seems rather conventional; I can't imagine a world where The Next Day sounds similarly conventional, but I look forward to getting there within the next few decades.

Bowie has finally cracked the secret of how to handle the onset of his old age - the strategy seems to be to abandon the rock star role altogether and instead become an oracle, a mysterious figure issuing forth strange pronouncements from the future at irregular intervals to be received with religious ecstasy by the faithful. (Perhaps this partly explains the "facelessness" of the cover art, the new approach overwriting the various rock star poses Bowie had adopted over the years.) Nobody knows when Tony Visconti will next descend from the mountain with another tablet of Bowie tracks for us to enjoy, but for the first time in my lifetime I feel I can receive a new Bowie album without a hint of trepidation. The man has well and truly got the magic back.