(100) Days of Soundtrack: #1 – David Bowie – Blackstar

It is no secret that The Daily Soundtrack has not been particularly “Daily” of late. This is for any number of reasons, but one large one is inspiration. I want this blog to be exploratory and introductory. I want it to discuss the emotions and memories behind what we hear and what we love. The difficulty is, sometimes we get in ruts. I know I go weeks sometimes focusing on one artist, maybe even one song. I have hundreds of songs which tell the same story. Furthermore, let us be honest, my new music intake has been stagnating. How does one avoid treading water in the same pool when confronted with these realities?

When my friend Amber mentioned she would be attempting to listen to a new album every day for 100 days, I knew there was a potential answer. The Daily Soundtrack was born of this sort of collaboration, of friends getting together to talk about their favorite songs. This led the other way: 100 days of music I don’t know means that regardless of preconceived notions, I literally know nothing about the music I am listening to. I’m experiencing it first hand. And I will be sharing it with you. It brings a different shared experience as the blog evolves into any number of new potential directions.

I do have a couple rules I’ve imposed on myself. I will not take up the mantle of an album on which I know 50% or more of the songs already. Sorry, Let it Be, but while I’ve never really heard you, I know most of your gems. The same goes for live albums and compilations, for similar reasons. On the other hand, however, I have allowed myself forgetfulness. If I don’t remember ever hearing an album, I am considering that as good as being new.

It is my hope and intent to chronicle all this along with you. My reviews and experiences will be honest and likely not always glowing. Nevertheless, you will finally receive once again what this blog promises: a soundtrack for each day.

So where to begin such an endeavor? Why not where we left off? Embarrassingly, I have yet to give David Bowie’s final album its due. I purchased it, despite a longstanding boycott of Sony products, but it has just sat until now, unloved, unheard. It is not for lack of excitement: the moment I heard “Blackstar,” the lengthy, droning, brilliant title track, it felt like rebirth. It felt like the most important album which could possibly come out in 2016. We’ve discussed already how devastatingly accurate that was. Now was the time to see if the music lived up to the hype as well as the mourning.

It is easy to be charmed from the beginning if you’re willing to keep an open mind. “Blackstar” is not the most user-friendly song, but it’s hypnotic. If it doesn’t pull you in via percussion, it will haunt you in its measured, ritualistic chant. By comparison, “Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” comes barreling out of the gate and froths to a Dixieland reverie. It feels like it could easily be 80s era Bowie, except for the disjointed jazz noodling over it. These juxtapositions seem to be a hallmark of the album. Blackstar plays with tempo dynamics. “Sue (Or In a Season of Crime),” perhaps most starkly, layers a leisurely “crooner” vocal line over frenetic drumming. I couldn’t help but think about this in the terms that Bowie himself put this album into, the terms the events of January forced the album to be spoken with. This is what dying must be like: the weakness, the slowness of the body itself, confronted with the knowledge that time is whizzing past. The album is full of these disparate thoughts, as tired voices and steady plodding tempos nevertheless crackle over with spurts of life in the horns and the drums.

With all of this in mind, it feels important that “Lazarus” ends with half an album left to unfold. This is, again, an album which cannot be separated from death. Bowie made it knowing his days were numbered, and released it days before he was to pass on. And yet after the song which is in so many ways meant to be his parting gift, we get a pair of tracks with their own animal vitality. When “Dollar Days” ends with the repeated “I’m dying to,” it is hard not to hear it as a yearning instead of one more hint at Bowie’s declining health. Even the final track, “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” is an odd farewell, implicitly suggesting there is more. Bowie dies on “Lazarus,” but like the titular man, he finds life after that death. It’s an incredibly chilling hope, coming from the voice of a man who knows his mortal life is drawing to an end, but it’s definitive hope… there is something more. Maybe it’s not the “more” of religion, or of a literal afterlife, but it’s something.

Overall, the album is about moments more than standout tracks: the lovely guitar solo which draws us to the end of the album, the unsettling howls of “Girl Loves Me,” the unhinging of song after song into chaos. If there is a standout besides the lead “singles,” it is “Dollar Days,” which is sad and beautiful, and would make as terrible a radio song as anything else on this album. As a whole, however, there is something cohesive that makes it easy to forgive some of the hamfisted lyrics on “Sue” or the repetition which typifies many of the song structures. It’s perhaps most interesting that, on this final statement, it is Bowie’s own statements which are often overshadowed by the musical landscapes being created. It left me with an odd feeling that the album never really ended, or perhaps never really started. Blackstar ends up being an album I cannot fault musically, but which leaves me completely uncertain how to feel. Like the avant garde should? Like death intrinsically does? Maybe so. And yet, whatever it is, I feel it deep. This may not be Bowie’s most memorable collection, but I am not apt to forget the feeling of listening to it. I can guarantee, much younger artists will fail to make a similar impression in the course of this project.

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