TheMagneticFieldDas machen ja bis dato komischerweise die Wenigsten, in den Rezensionen, die ich bisher gelesen habe. Woran mag das liegen?
Man müsste dann wohl einfach ehrlich sein und sagen, dass das musikalisch äußerst durchschnittlich tönt – so jedenfalls meine Meinung nach wenigen Höreindrücken. Aber das Comeback-Album einer Legende (warum eigentlich?) darf natürlich nicht öde sein (warum eigentlich?).
Spin gibt 5/10 und schreibt unter anderem:
The Next Day is an album that didn’t need to be made. Plenty of his contemporaries — including Elton and the Stones — still release albums at his level of craft, a couple of which sundry publications have even patted on the head and cited in year-end lists. But because Bowie requires context and reactive poses for vitality — and uses distance as a muse — his albums don’t function as mere singer-songwriter collections; they demand to be accepted as statements. He can’t, at 66, suddenly cultivate a new imaginary universe commensurate with the demands of such an infamous style thief and aesthetic flâneur. Does he still require vampiric devotion at the level described in „The Stars (Are Out Tonight)“? For Bowie, abjuring histrionics is impossible, but emulating the quieter mischief of Luis Buñuel and Leonard Cohen — to cite two far more vital septuagenarians — would be creepy as fuck, too.
In other words, it’s difficult to imagine a context in which new Bowie product would work. Reality capped a decade of false starts and dead ends that often produced thrilling music; it was a bourbon before bed. The Next Day asks fans to pretend those years of courageous dormancy didn’t exist.
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