Album Review: David Bowie - The Next Day

It's not every day David Bowie releases a new record and it's even rarer that a heritage artist of his age releases something of such a high calibre. The glitzy days of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane are long gone and Bowie certainly doesn't attempt a reinvention of any sort; instead he absorbs his past, breathes new life into it and gracefully moves it on, maintaining the relentless hunger that he's always displayed loudly and proudly.

The lowdown first single, Where Are We Now, was dropped on his 66^th birthday and led proceedings with mixed results, but it's on its own in its nostalgia here, aside from Dirty Boys perhaps with its obvious nod to Boys Keep Swinging. The opening and title track struts like only Bowie can, with guitar squeals and a distinct anger in the lyrics – “Here I am, not quite dying/My body left to rot in a hollow tree.”

Elsewhere, a complicated mood erupts and things fly back and forth – The Stars (Are Out Tonight) toys with the reoccurring theme of stars while the brilliantly frantic If You Can See Me is one of the most experimental things here, oozing energy and youth like no other of his age. I'd Rather Be High and Valentine's Day are also highlights with their mid-paced values and varying lyrical themes of anti-war and a tiny-faced character respectively.

The return of Bowie with The Next Day is a triumph, a latter-career highlight that occasionally flirts with mortality but still fires with defiance and innovation while showing off everything that makes the man – one of the finest, most stylish and bravest musicians of the past 40 years – so irreplaceable.