5. Where Are We Now?
Lead single
Where Are We Now? is one of only three ballads on the album, a melancholic reflection on his Berlin days told from the rare perspective of Bowie himself. The song's lush and gorgeous soundscape comprises twinkling keys, swirling synths and simple guitar chords set against Bowies gentle and meditative vocal. He dimly recalls moments of his past in Berlin; it's Bowie at his most heartfelt, stripped bare of the personas he so often clothes himself in to channel his music. Just before the two minute mark his voice cracks at the end of the phrase "fingers are crossed just in case..." invoking the touching image of Bowie longingly peering through the clouded veil of his past, a "man lost in time." A future classic- simultaneously life affirming and tear provoking.
RATING: 5/5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWtsV50_-p4
6. Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day is, on the surface at least, the album's most pop-fuelled moment, taking the beat of 1972 track
The Jean Genie and marrying it with the glam-rock sounds that characterised much of
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It's a track that, come the release of
Suede's
Bloodsports on Monday 18th March,
Brett Anderson may well be wishing he'd wrote. The enthralling pop melody conceals a dark subject matter- that of a planned massed murder, though it's told in Bowie's traditionally opaque manner and hidden beneath guitarist
Earl Slick's rousing angular guitar riffs.
RATING: 4.25/5
7. If You Can See Me
Track seven is the strangest and most experimental song on
The Next Day, featuring a skittering drum and bass arrangement and frequent tempo changes. Bowie spouts wrathful wraith-like vocals seemingly from the perspective of an angry god (I will take your lands and all that lays beneath/ The dust of cold flowers/ The prison of dark of ashes"), his commands punctuated by screeching keyboards and
Gail Ann Dorseys spectre-like wails. Its unsettling, addictive but invariably awesome.
RATING: 4.25/5