David Bowie – Blackstar (1LP/GF)

David Bowie – Blackstar (1LP/GF)

David Bowie – Blackstar is an extraordinary final statement from one of the most innovative artists in popular music. Released in January 2016 on Bowie’s 69th birthday, just two days before his death, the album was already mysterious and unsettling on first listen. In the context of what followed, it became something even more powerful.

The remarkable title track sets the tone: nearly ten minutes of shifting rhythms, jazz, electronics and haunting vocals that refuses to behave like a conventional rock song. "Lazarus" is equally striking, while "I Can't Give Everything Away", "Dollar Days" and "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore" reveal an artist still experimenting and pushing forward rather than looking nostalgically backwards.

Working with producer Tony Visconti and a group of accomplished New York jazz musicians, Bowie created a sound that draws on experimental rock, jazz and electronic music without fitting comfortably into any of them. The playing is exceptional, but everything serves the strange, dark atmosphere running through the record.

Blackstar inevitably feels like a farewell, particularly knowing Bowie was seriously ill while making it, but reducing it simply to an album about death misses much of what makes it so special. It is adventurous, difficult, beautiful and occasionally bewildering – exactly the sort of record one might hope David Bowie would make at the end of an extraordinary career.