David Bowie - Blackstar

For more than 40 years David Bowie has been a synonym for ‘reinvention’, the master of messing with expectations. He’s an artist who has always teased, surprised and produced the astonishing. “All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience,” he said in an interview with The Word in 2003. And yet, though his return in 2013 - with the relatively straightforward ‘The Next Day’ - was surprising and unexpected, it also seemed to be a sign that the master was ready to celebrate the spoils of his incomparable legacy. Yet, for an artist whose music has been as changeable as his image, this predictability was the most surprising thing. Was that his swan song? Was this the end?

‘Blackstar’ answers those questions, unequivocally showing Bowie is far from short of ideas. For - rather than a curtain call on an extraordinary career - his 26th album, released on his 69th birthday, shows that ‘The Next Day’ was merely a deep breath, the chance to gather himself before a new beginning, a way of freeing himself up for his next move.

‘Blackstar’, like all the best work of Bowie’s, is an album that takes inspiration from unexpected and unfamiliar areas. Tony Visconti said that they had admired how Kendrick Lamar’s album ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ stood both within and outside hip hop. It’s this type of thinking that makes the album so startling, taking in not just hip hop and abstract jazz but also warped showtunes, folk-pop and even Brechtian theatre.

It’s that wideness of scope that’s the most exhilarating aspect. From challenging, in your face exploration to beautifully light-as-air soulful ballads, there’s a constant idea that there’s no clue as to where the next track will swerve. There’s a feeling that Bowie is having fun too: enlisting the Donny McCaslin Quartet makes it feel experimental in tone, with the band giving Bowie the ability to indulge his avant-garde side.