The Next Day

The release of The Next Day would have been one of the biggest stories of the year no matter what its quality--the fact that it also happens to be one of the best records of Bowie’s career to date just makes the comeback that much more triumphant.

The vast majority of The Next Day is vibrant, even delirious, roaring with Bowie’s heaviest rockers and teeming with guitar hooks that just beg to be lovingly re-appropriated by James Murphy.

Innovative, dark, bold and creative, it’s an album only David Bowie could make.

It’s certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist’s own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality, as The Next Day does.

It is an enormous pleasure to report that the new David Bowie album is an absolute wonder: urgent, sharp-edged, bold, beautiful and baffling, an intellectually stimulating, emotionally charged, musically jagged, electric bolt through his own mythos and the mixed-up, celebrity-obsessed, war-torn world of the 21st century.

The Next Day is not just a strong comeback, but a stunning, resonant piece of expression--an intimate communiqué that whispers at the soul without denying the labyrinth of identity that once made Bowie a self-contained echo chamber.

Bowie and producer Tony Visconti, who helped shaped his sound in the 1970s as well as produce seven T. Rex records, have struck gold in creating a work that is modern and well-connected to the artist's fabled sonic-past.

The Next Day is very, very good. Purposefully good--the work of someone who seemingly knew that if he was going to come back at all, it had to be with something blessed with brilliance.

So more than half the album is fantastic, and the rest is very, very strong.

It’s his most consistent and rewarding work since “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps” in 1980.

With 14 magnetic works, the album is so packed with vivid Bowie-isms that it seems like he's been storing away one plump specimen per year so that in the proverbial wintertime he'd be ready for a glorious feast.

The Next Day offers an embarrassment of riches that should keep listeners busy for weeks and months to come.

Though it's been 10 years since his previous release, The Next Day is Bowie's most consistent record in twice as much time.

A vintage Bowie album for vintage Bowie people, of whom there are many; a reflection on his own journey and also on ours. [Apr 2013, p.92]

The Next Day is certainly his most engaging and intriguing since Outside. For now, that’s more than enough.

The Next Day is complex, pissed off and crafty.

You can’t really blame Bowie for conforming to 21st-century quality control when it comes to the sound and scope of this record, but it’s not exactly something to be celebrated either. What deserves celebration, or at least indulgence, are the glimpses of sublime execution on The Next Day, as well as Bowie’s skill in maintaining his mystique after all this time.

It is a welcome, surprising return to form.

There’s a confidence exhibited here that’s refreshing.

The Next Day is the best Bowie album in 33 years, but it’s perfectly reasonable to not even call it a top 10 Bowie album.

It’s happy to take the listener on sudden, unexpected, journeys but also to just be exactly what it is; a really great rock album from a man who knows a thing or two about writing really great rock albums.

The Next Day offers many sides of a multifaceted artist and almost all of them mesmerizing, as the songs grow richer with each listen.

One has to dig deep and fight uphill to connect here, but that climb results in a rewarding, fascinating listen.

There are no duds here, though Bowie definitely misses the hipster mark on occasion.

Vital, confident, and defiantly alive, Bowie has, with an imperfect but exhilarating album, announced his return to rock's top table. Anything from this point on is a bonus.

The Next Day [is] Bowie's most impassioned and convincing work in decades. [Apr 2013, p.84]

It demands that you listen to it in this moment, not that you give it an easy ride because this is the man who made ‘Heroes’; and its songs more than live up to the demand.

This is a contemplative, confident record which will only strengthen with further listening.

David Bowie's perpetual predicament is that he can't escape David Bowie's past. In that respect, he's just like the rest of us: we can't escape David Bowie's past either. The Next Day leaves you wondering why you'd ever want to.

Each song feels like a separate vignette, but putting your finger on the exact theme isn't easy; more often it's left entirely to the interpretation of the listener.

A triumphant album.

An album that's thought-provoking, strange and filled with great songs.

Musically, The Next Day isn't as radical or dreary, as it bounces around from style to style, casually suggesting past greatness while rarely matching it. The production is clean and crisp, almost to a fault, leaving little room for the off-kilter spontaneity that highlights Bowie's best work.

A few tracks lack clear antecedents (see: the Jack White-aping “You Will Set the World on Fire”), and some simply lack cohesion, or at least enough melody to anchor them. But Day is also an excellent reminder that Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, and the lunatic who sang Christmas songs with Bing Crosby have all been coexisting in the same brain for decades.

The Next Day neither enhances nor diminishes anything that came before, it's merely a sweet coda to a towering career.

The bottom line is that The Next Day proves that Bowie, whoever he might be, is back, invigorating his listeners even as he stupefies them.

His innovative days may be long behind him, but Bowie's melodic gifts remain undiminished and his lyrics appropriately ambiguous.

Pop music is never a purely cerebral exercise, and despite its intriguing concept, The Next Day is woefully short on anything to sing along to.

The Next Day is a good latter-day Bowie record, worthy of at least a few listens, but since it's so evocative of his earlier, better work there's little reason not to put on Scary Monsters or Heroes instead.

A dense, angry, complex rock album.

Put quite simply The Next Day is dull.

The collision of rhetoric and intentions result in both colorless abstractions like piano ballad and first single "Where Are We Now," and grand melodrama like "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die."