David Bowie is releasing his first album in ten years in March, The Next Day, and in celebration of his 66th birthday he has already dropped a new song on ITunes "Where Are We Now". Wow, talk about a surprise! In 2004 Bowie had an emergency angioplasty and cancelled the rest of his tour. Since then he has performed a couple of times but released no new material.
Here in New York we have had the occasional sighting, Bowie being photographed hailing a cap was enough of an excuse for rock nyc to write him up.
The Next Day was produced by longtime David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, who produced Bowie as early as 1969's Space Oddity, and recorded in New York, there is also a video (we posted it below).
"Where Are We Now" is a mid-tempo piece of melancholy becrying (maybe that's not the word, remembering?) East Berlin with references to Potsdamer Platz, an area destroyed in WW2 and a no man's land during the cold war years. Bowie is in fine voice, his voice deeper but still the usual intense emotional boomer that gives reverberation to every song he sings.And the words, stuff about "walking the dead" and a yearning dissonance, and a strange hopefulness in the brige "as long as there's me, as long as there's you". From the Berlin location to the black and white album cover, what is suggested here is a recherchez de Heroes Perdu, a look back at the Bowie of Low and Heroes with brian Eno though the music has the sink of Heathen and Reality but the down beat yet upwards moodiness of Heroes. The song is old fashioned or maybe more like out of fashion. It isn't bad, I wish the melody was a little better, the orchestration gets what there is with a ringing guitar and strings with synth plays underneath. I'm a more than happy to hear it, Bowie has certainly released worse. The synth in the background of the chorus is lovely. The mood is hopeful yet deeply sad. The sense of aging is just there at the outer edge.
The video is great, catch it below, inside an artists home with Bowie and a models head superimposed on dolls (and Bowie acting with his eyelids and looking very tired) and black and white film unspooling in the background
Oh and happy 66th Birthday David!
Grade: B