Return of The Duke
By Tuesday morning Bowie’s ‘comeback’ was plastered all over the press and blaring out of radios
This week, just as all the music journo’s had finished having their “what to look forward to in 2013” articles published, a fuck-off metaphorical anvil fell from the clouds and smashed them to pieces; all of them made irrelevant. No-one expected David Bowie to return with new material; his last release was a decade ago; he turned 66 this week, the day the announcement was made. But by Tuesday morning Bowie’s ‘comeback’ was plastered all over the press and blaring out of radios.
This return to the limelight isn’t just in the form of a couple of songs pushed out to bump up sales of a Greatest Hits album (c.f. The Rolling Stones last year), a whole new album is to be released on March 11. The first song from this, entitled ‘Where Are We Now?’, was delicately placed on Bowie’s website at 00:00 08/01/13, and subsequently devoured by the internetz. Twitter went mental.
‘Where Are We Now?’ sees Bowies in a very reflective, melancholy mood as he looks back over his long career. The song predominantely looks back on his time spent in Berlin towards the end of the 1970s; this was a pivotal period in Bowie’s career. He moved to the then-divided German capital to quit his consuming cocaine habit and become more involved in the Krautrock scene, bearing the likes of Kraftwerk. It was here that Bowie also worked with Iggy Pop, with whom he was sharing an apartment, on his seminal album The Idiot.
In ‘Where Are We Now?’ his vulnerable, tremorous vocals begin raw and pensive before being elevated by painfully sad yet defiant piano chords, reverb-laden guitar and strings. It really is a beautiful piece of music and almost feels like a full stop to a career spanning half a century. Whether it will prove to be so remains to be seen.
Expectations for the album entitled The Next Day are understandably high; indeed pre-orders for both the single and album are currently at No. 1 on the iTunes chart. Only time will tell whether the album lives up to the huge promise shown by this first release, but when Bowie’s at his best no-one comes close.
