I'm tired of attending funerals for David Bowie's career. I mean, they're always pleasant, catered affairs, and the chance to hobnob with a star-studded crowd of washed-up mourners like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop is undeniably great, but David never actually shows up. Critics have tried to write him off for more than a decade, and his work has been mostly sub-par even longer. But somehow, some way, he's managed to scrape together enough of the old Bowie charm on every release to keep alive the hope that he might just have one final hurrah left in him. Unlike some of his contemporaries (I'm looking at you, Iggy), he might, conceivably, still have a fighting chance. But while everyone's busy measuring his latest work against the towering legacy of Ziggy and the Spiders and looking ahead to his next last gasp, it would be easy to overlook that Heathen is the best Bowie release in years.
But so what? Bowie committed the unpardonable sin of being too good, too soon. For an artist to produce an album as exquisitely relevant and inventive as Hunky Dory is rare, but to follow it with the colossus of Ziggy Stardust, and even Aladdin Sane, Low, and Scary Monsters-- he made genius sound so easy. With those first few groundbreaking albums, though, he utterly screwed himself. The shadow of his early work will follow him forever, and having hit the twilight of his career after tripping and falling over that 1987 snot-rocket, Never Let Me Down, it has loomed larger than ever. Heathen will surely be condemned by those who cannot forgive him for his past greatness, and will likely be loved by a few who still imagine strains of "Space Oddity" beneath its refrains. It's hard to shake the thought that even thirty years later, some people still seem to be expecting another Ziggy.
Yet Heathen doesn't herald a second coming for David Bowie-- not by a longshot. The youthful urgency of his early work is long gone. But that hasn't stopped him from making an album that is easily his best work since the halcyon days of faux-cockney accents and gender bending theatrics a la Scary Monsters, and that's good news. Bowie seems to have finally realized that he's just been trying too damn hard. Where 2000's Hours was a brooding, wrist-slitting account of Bowie's laments about growing old and irrelevant, Heathen is the sound of acceptance. He's relaxed, even serene, and the songs clearly reflect this with a nonchalant charm reminiscent of the Bowie of old.
This is not a particularly cheery record: "Sunday" is a somber, almost sinister chant that builds into an ascending chorus of warm synths and percussion-- a tense, minimal remix of the best moments of Earthling, if you will. In what will surely be the song most often quoted by record critics, "Slip Away," Bowie muses: "Some of us will always stay behind/ Down in space it's always 1982/ The joke we always knew," a brief moment of smiling recognition at the state of his career, fans, and detractors in the wake of his past glory days. Gorgeous and sad, it evokes the simplicity of the past as Bowie sings of "sailing over Coney Island" to a lone piano melody and a compelling Moog-y electronic refrain.
"Slow Burn" is the strongest of Bowie's original material on Heathen-- a moody, bouncy piece with a bass/sax combo that vaguely elicits a 60s pop undercurrent with guitar work from Pete Townshend (yeah, that Pete Townshend!). Townshend's help here is appreciated, mostly because it means the guitar isn't being played by Reeves Gabrels. If Bowie had considered bringing him in earlier, he could have avoided the horror of a car crash like Hours' "The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell." Fortunately, Townshend's guitar noodling never steps into the realm of being entirely gratuitous, and as with all the best songs on Heathen, Bowie's vocals are wisely left to dominate.
But oddly, it's the covers that are truly the highlight of the album. Bowie tries his hand at the Pixies' "Cactus" (a move which might make the album's title sound ironically appropriate)-- but take a deep breath. Everything's going to be okay. Mercifully, he handles the song very faithfully, and actually does it justice. He's a far cry from Black Francis, but Bowie's voice is so amazingly distinctive that it almost sounds like a different song. He then moves on to Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You." I don't know what's caused the current rash of Neil Young covers lately, but at least Bowie's old enough to make this sound a little more natural than most might. Bowie hasn't touched rock 'n' roll like this in years, and that he can still carry it off this well is a pleasant surprise.
Heathen's piece de resistance, though, is the phenomenal cover of "I Took a Trip In a Gemini Spaceship" by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Name-based alter ego issues aside, this song is smooth. It's got a fast-paced electronic rhythm to quicken the pulse, and dulcet tones to soothe the ear-- nothing but laid-back electropop fun from start to finish. It's the kind of thing they'll be playing in the lounge of the International Space Station in about ten years or so, assuming the capsule doesn't get pimped out as an orbiting bachelor pad for N*SYNC or something stupid like that.
Bowie is obviously never going to recapture his trend-setting finesse of yesteryear, but at least he seems okay with that. And that's this record's greatest strength. Back when he was busy reminding everyone how out of it he really was by touring with Trent Reznor, he started to play "The Man Who Sold the World" and I actually heard a kid, maybe only two years younger than me, say, "Oh, cool. He's covering a Nirvana song." If that's not a warning sign, I don't know what is. Yes, David, the music world is moving on without you, but you can't end things with Heathen-- some of us, myself included, are still waiting for that final blaze of glory. Before you go, you've got to let the kids know what they missed out on.
