Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
It is perhaps a peculiarity of life that you can miss someone for years, you can wonder why they stopped producing some of the most intricate and interesting sounds, the most devilish of lyrics and the most enjoyable ways to spend an evening infront of a log fire and yet after many years away they come back into your life and you have to admit that you might wonder what you saw or heard of them in the first place.
No one could or should ever doubt that absolute phenomenal work that David Bowie produced right until around 1990, the man was able to make love to you all night, your ears ever receptive to the changes made across each of his acted out personas and the sheer scale of beauty that rode majestically each song, like a white stallion in full flight, it took your breath away. No one can dismiss the man but to say his latest album Black Star is up there with the likes of Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane or Ziggy Stardust, is to pander only to the past and whilst everybody moves on, styles change and fashions come and go, you cannot help but wonder if the mystique, the surge of electricity felt whenever David Bowie entered the room and the music came on, has dissipated into the ether.
That is not to say that Black Star is not listenable, far from it, it has elements of toughness, of greatness woven through it like a thread of gold making its way past a barn full of hay, it will keep you warm, it will add a hint of richness to the listener’s lives but ultimately it will do no more than that, it won’t be the foundation to a new appreciation of one of the great British artists of all time.
With the tracks ‘Tis A Pity She Was A Whore and Sue (Or In A Season of Crime) included in the album, the light offered makes the time spent listening less of a feeling of being off course and finding yourself tied up in the wake of the event and more holding on with grim determination to see the journey through; a voyage of discovery to which the waters are uncharted and arguably unfathomable.
Black Star, an album that only serves to notice that the halcyon days may have finally gone for good.
Ian D. Hall