The opening months of 2016 are filling me with nostalgia.  Not only did I pre-order and just download the new David Bowie album Blackstar (formally released today, December 8th, the same day as Mr. Bowie’s -gulp!- 69th birthday) but I’ve also pre-ordered the upcoming Anthrax album For All Kings (release date: February 26th) and the Megadeth album Dystopia (release date: January 22).  So far, the preview songs released from these later two albums have impressed me and, with regard to Megadeth in particular who I feel had become lost since Mr. Mustaine’s religious right conversion, that’s saying a lot (check out the song The Threat is Real.  Whew!)

It’s rare that I want to buy one album in any given two month period of time, but three?

Getting back to David Bowie’s Blackstar, I’m usually hesitant to review an album in full until listening to it a few times.  Songs you may not like at first may grow on you while others you like right away may wear out their welcome.

However, before downloading the full Blackstar album, Mr. Bowie pre-released two of its seven songs and I’ve heard them plenty of time.  The first release was the song the album was named after, Blackstar…

…a little later came Lazarus, a song which supposedly is about Thomas Jerome Newton, the alien character Mr. Bowie played in the movie The Man Who Fell To Earth…

Having thoroughly vetted both songs, I really, really liked what I heard.

Given the album has 7 songs and I’d listened to two of them as well as a somewhat different version of a third song, Sue (or a Season in Crime), I’ve already heard nearly a third of the album before its official release so I feel more comfortable in giving my thoughts.

Here goes: This is one hell of an album.

The cliche regarding just about every new David Bowie release falls along the line of “his best work since Scary Monsters” or somesuch.

To some degree, I understand the sentiment.  After the release of his immensely popular album Let’s Dance way back in 1983, Mr. Bowie hit a bump in the road, creatively.  He followed up Let’s Dance with Tonight, an album that had a few good songs but felt like a half-hearted effort.  He followed that up with the ironically titled Never Let Me Down, an album that also featured some good songs but, to my ears, appeared to be Mr. Bowie trying a little too hard to create a “hit” record.  It’s little wonder Mr. Bowie himself feels this is the worst album he’s created.

After that album, Mr. Bowie tried his hand at hard rock/heavy metal (not as strange a concept as one might think) with Tin Machine.  After that fizzled out, he released 1993’s Black Tie White Noise, an album that didn’t do all that much for me.

But what followed was magic.

Starting with 1993’s The Buddha of Suburbia and the absolutely excellent follow-up, 1995s 1. Outside, Mr. Bowie was suddenly on a roll.

Blackstar represents Mr. Bowie’s 8th album since the release of The Buddha of Suburbia and it is breathtaking how invested he appears in this particular work.  It’s as if he’s found yet another new crack in the music landscape and is mining it for all its worth.  His singing is soulful and the mere seven songs presented are emotional, vibrant, strange (in an oh-so-good-way), experimental (I’ve never heard anything from Mr. Bowie quite like Girl Loves Me, a song that sounds almost like…rap?!), and fulfilling, even more so than the critically acclaimed (and also quite good) previous album The Next Day.

When I was younger and just discovering Mr. Bowie, one of the greatest laments I had was the “what if” question of what might have happened if Mr. Bowie had continued with his Spiders of Mars bandmates, especially guitarist Mick Ronson.  Might there have been more albums on par with The Man Who Sold The World or Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane?

With the release of Blackstar the answer, which should have been evident before, becomes all the more clear: Because of Mr. Bowie’s nature and his drive to create different types of music, Bowie works best with musicians for a limited amount of time.  His best stuff seems to come when he moves on to new musicians, as he transitioned from those early rock albums into the Berlin Trilogy, etc. etc.  With Blackstar, Mr. Bowie has a new stable of musicians behind him, known mostly for their work in jazz, and it appears to have reinvigorated and renewed him.

Having said that, the music on this album isn’t so radically different as to not be recognizably David Bowie.  In the song Blackstar, it would appear Mr. Bowie, to my ears anyway, has fused his very early work The WIld Eyed Boy From Freecloud…

…with Loving the Alien…

For Sue (or a Season of Crime) I get a distinct 1. Outside vibe, so much so that the song could easily fit on that album.

Regardless of the call outs or similarities, Blackstar is a terrific work from one of the most gifted musicians out there today.

If you’re a fan of David Bowie, buying Blackstar is a no-brainer.  If you haven’t listened to any of David Bowie’s recent works, you’d do well to give it a try.

Highly recommended.