Jovitalk - Bon Jovi Fan Community - Bowie's Comeback Thread

The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...um-review.html

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 Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...y-8510608.html

Its certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artists own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality, as The Next Day does. The fact that producer Tony Visconti has worked with Bowie since the Seventies undoubtedly helps cement the connection with his earlier work there are constant frissons of recognition while listening to these songs, as if Bowie is deliberately mining memories. That notion is reinforced by the typically artful cover, which takes the original sleeve for the Heroes album and partly obscures its image with a simple sans-serif font title panel and, on the rear, a similarly blunt track listing, making the new album a sort of palimpsest of history.

Q (review only available in print)

Four star reviews ****

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013...ext-day-review

Despite the lyrical density, The Next Day's success rests on simple pleasures, not a phrase you'd ever use to describe Lodger or Station to Station. You could argue that means the naysayers still have a point. For all the pointers it offers in that direction, The Next Day isn't the equal of Bowie's 70s work: but then, the man himself might reasonably argue, what is? Perhaps it's destined to be remembered more for the unexpected manner in which it was announced than its contents. That doesn't seem a fair fate for an album that's thought-provoking, strange and filled with great songs. Listening to The Next Day makes you hope it's not a one-off, that his return continues apace: no mean feat, given that listening to a new album by most of his peers makes you wish they'd stick to playing the greatest hits.

The Times

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/m...cle3698866.ece

A great album and a sense of mystery (subscription required)

Mojo

http://manofmusic.xooit.fr/t440-MOJO...e-Next-Day.htm

Like Lodger, The Next Day is stylistically scattershot but it holds together far better. There's dry, baritone sax-enriched electro-funk (Dirty Boys) and maniacal, Dalek-voiced hyperactive prog-rock (If You Can See Me). There are nods to shuffle-beat Stone Roses (I'd Rather Be High) and falsetto steals fromù The Shadows' Apache. There's even a patience-testing dud, the funkily orthodox Boss Of Me, and then there's You Feel So Lonely You Could Die, a grandstanding ballad that crescendos like Rock'n'Roll Suicide and fades with the Five Years drum intro.

So we were wrong. "The stars are never sleeping," declares a mildly exasperated but still alive and well Bowie on The Stars (Are Out Tonight). That's him in the song all right, once more peeking through those legendary curtains, "soaking up our primitive world".

No star rating (very positive)

The Quietus

http://thequietus.com/articles/11500...ext-day-review

Fortunately, its great. I mean: its not just good, its great. Its not Diamond Dogs or Young Americans or Low get real, this isnt the Seventies and you and I are not twelve but its great in that its not Heathen or Reality but better. No wild pioneering sonic experiments here: its primarily a "rock" album with plentiful twists, with the closest sibling being Scary Monsters. The gorgeous melancholy of 'Where Are We Now?' is unrepresentative.

The Monthly

http://www.themonthly.com.au/david-b...t-forster-7624

True to the spirit of The Next Day, David Bowies first studio album in ten years, one should jump straight in at track one and describe proceedings from there. Bowies brusque manner on the opening title track, and the stomp of the 13 tracks that follow some tipping just three minutes signal that the great man is impatient to impress and keen not to linger on the past. Any way you look at it, the album has to be regarded as a new chapter in a recording career that began, amazingly enough, in 1964.

Time Out

http://now-here-this.timeout.com/201...-the-next-day/

The Next Day is a very brilliant rock record. Its intelligent, memorable and even a little provocative. Given the dearth of true talent working in the medium of rock at present, theres every chance youll hear your favourite guitar solo of the year on this LP not to mention the deepest lyrics, the best chord changes or the most catchy choruses (more on those in a minute). That His Davidness can trounce the meagre competition around him in 2013 is no surprise. Hes buried his imitators in every decade hes worked in, from Slade to Suede. The crucial thing though is that The Next Day stands proud when judged against his own exceptional back catalogue. This one fact alone makes it a five-star album an album thats sincerely deserving of your attention.

BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/rnpn

With the opacity and lack of easy answers that you would hope for from this most stylish and creative of artists, this is a triumphant, almost defiant, return. Innovative, dark, bold and creative, its an album only David Bowie could make.