Our current reality for Saturday night fun: having some good Italian takeout from local favorite Orzo (support your local businesses that remain open!) and watching one of the many movies we missed from their original theater run (tonight: 1917. Well done all around.)
Tonight’s post-cinema disc: the fingers landed on David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar. His parting gift to us all, and his final piece of art. He recorded the damn thing in secret in NYC while he was sick with liver cancer with old friend Tony Visconti producing, and jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin’s quartet backing him. It was released on his 69th birthday, and two days later he was dead. The album package is reputedly full of Easter eggs, but the most important thing here is the music.
Talk about a sprint to the finish line: while 2013’s (also) out-of-the-blue The Next Day was a welcome return to form, it wasn’t as start-to-finish strong as this disc. The band puts plenty of swing into these tracks, but they all rock. Bowie’s lyrics here are more evocative/cryptic than ever. They paint a gray mood at the beginning of the disc, growing darker towards the beginning of side two, then the light dawns on the last two tracks. It’s on “Dollar Days” and “I Can’t Give Everything Away” that he appears to come to terms with his end. You come to realize in gifting this work to us that he loved this world as much as the world loved him back.
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