David Bowie's final album, Blackstar

[thewayne]

David Bowie's final album was released last week Friday. I was in a book store in Las Cruces on Thursday and saw the notice on the wall behind the register and was looking forward to it, obviously I wasn't prepared for it to be his final album. But he clearly knew it was likely to be his last work, and he put a lot in to it.

I picked it up yesterday at lunch and listened to it twice, and I quite like it.

The title track, which is also the first track, is very different and it's long, clocking in at over 9 minutes. It's almost two songs. The rest of the album is a little more conventional (compares well with his previous work) and very good. There's a lot of familiarity to it, some tracks are reminiscent of Black Tie White Noise, others evoke images of earlier work.

All in all, an excellent album and a great capstone to his career and life.

I'd like to talk more specifically about individual tracks, but I leant the disc to my boss and my iMac is in the shop, which holds my music collection and is also what I sync my iPhone to, so I can't load it on my phone right now which makes me very unhappy (CURSE YOU, APPLE, FOR NOT LETTING US SYNC OUR iDEVICES ON MULTIPLE COMPUTERS!)


Anyway, it is an excellent album and I highly recommend it.


Also, I recommend Wil Wheaton's remembrance of working on a film in the early '80s with Susan Sarandon and her turning him on to Bowie's Space Oddity via a cassette in a Sony Waklkman. It's a very good story.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I do wish Apple would offer a non-syncing option, in addition to the "traditional" method. Not so much for music, in my case, as video - music videos, TV episodes, and films. Whilst music videos tend to be there to stay, the others will be more transitory, included for some longer journey or visit. And once you've got more than, say, a couple dozen films or books showing in iTunes, the view offered is the only one available, with no option to, say, show the full path for a given file, when you might have a couple copies, either on different drives, or maybe only one is actually still valid. And a document that's updated (say, a PDF export from a text file) doesn't automatically get updated with the new copy. Not to even start on the awkward way the Videos app now insets all music videos onto a white background with a border, rather than simply being full screen, as before.

Consequently, I've moved all my music videos, TV, and films out of Videos, and into VLC, which is rather less hassle to deal with, as well as not minding Matroska containers.

Anyway! Bowie. I'll have to revisit the album sometime, as it's not really where I'm at, at the moment. Certainly a good album, but I'm presently more after the lighter side of acoustics, or bouncier electronica, which doesn't really describe Blackstar. =:) Still, though.. what a damned loss to the world. So many tracks he's not just known for, but world famous for, to say nothing of his endless musical and personal reinvention.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I went on a bit of a Kraftwerk buying binge when we got back from Germany, I'm missing, I think, two albums: Ralf und Florian and I can't remember the other.

It's kind of funny and embarrassing: when I was planning our trip to Berlin, the initial place that I was looking at staying was in the NE sector and I found Kraftwerk and they had tours! I later found out that it was a power station. :-) Still, had I the time, I would have liked to have toured it.

You know, that could make for an interesting video -- photos and videos of the station set to KW music!

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

It is certainly an album that rewards repeated listens. I think it i q quite a fitting end to a great career.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. Since my iMac is down, I actually ripped it on my work computer so I can listen to it through half-way decent speakers. It definitely benefits from repeat listening, moreso than any other of his albums (IMO).

It is a sad capstone, but an excellent one nonetheless.