David BowieOnly Bowie could disappear for a decade, record an album over two years in total secrecy and release it with little publicity only to elicit almost instant universal acclaim and provoke the most extraordinary amount of theorising discussion. The album many feared may never be released is here at last. So for the Teenage Wildlife who grew up listening to Ziggy, Thin White Duke, “A Lad Insane”, The Man Who Fell To Earth and also …Sold The World, we have to ask using Bowie's own words, Where Are We Now? Sounding like a loving reverse glance at Bowie's back catalogue, this album bristles with all kinds of references to his illustrious past. If all Bowie's previous incarnations were the colours of the spectrum of light as featured on that Pink Floyd album cover, then imagine that he's passing them back through that prism to create a pure white light that brings it all together into a distillation of everything that is essentially Bowie. The title track sounds like Blue Jean colliding with Suffragette City and Dirty Boys could have featured on Young Americans. Thankfully nostalgia never dominates. Bowie's re-synthesising and delivering pretty bleak lyrics about death, murder, war, cheap celebrity and the here and now. The sadness of Where Are We Now? remains a painful pill to swallow. Valentine's Day has a sweet Starman-esque melody and Bowie's delivery shows us just how little his voice has changed over the years. Much like Heroes, The Stars (Are Out Tonight) is exactly the kind of pop perfection that only Bowie can deliver. At times it is hard to get away from the feeling that this well-rounded album may be Bowie's last. Fingers crossed it marks a new (and long) phase of his career.
