The Next Day
A muscular, defiant return to form that subverts Bowie's own legend. Dense art-rock textures meet sharp, cryptic reflections on history and mortality.
A muscular, defiant return to form that subverts Bowie's own legend. Dense art-rock textures meet sharp, cryptic reflections on history and mortality.
Triumphant return
A sharp, unexpected crack of a snare drum shatters a decade of silence, introducing a record that feels like a ghost reclaiming its haunted house. The music balances a thick, thumping physical presence with a biting, jagged guitar friction, actively deconstructing a mythic past rather than retreating into it. Throughout the late-night, urban-dusk atmosphere, a rich, weathered voice carries both a snarl and a sigh over sophisticated, raw art-rock arrangements.
Rather than retreating into a quiet, autumnal twilight, this record charges forward with a defiant spirit that transforms reflections on mortality into a fierce, loud reclamation of creative authority.
Shares art rock, post-punk, alternative rock (subgenres); analog_warmth, layered_dense, studio_polished (production style)
Shares art rock, post-punk, alternative rock (subgenres); layered_dense, analog_warmth, studio_polished (production style)
Shares defiant, nostalgic, brooding (moods); layered_dense, analog_warmth, noise_textured (production style)
Shares analog_warmth, layered_dense, studio_polished (production style); post-punk, new wave, art rock (subgenres)
Shares art rock, alternative rock, post-punk (subgenres); analog_warmth, layered_dense, studio_polished (production style)
Shares art rock, alternative rock, post-punk (subgenres); analog_warmth, studio_polished, layered_dense (production style)
Critics broadly admired the album as a strong return focused on sharp songcraft, warmly noting how its atmospheric and shadowy moods recall his collaborative work from the late 1970s. While most welcomed the record as a highly successful addition to his discography, some reviewers felt it functioned more as a pleasant concluding note to his career rather than a major reinvention.
“This didn’t need to happen”Read review
“Now he’s just an old fellow who is fighting against the current, and The Next Day is a brutal drowning”
“David Bowie’s perpetual predicament is that he can’t escape David Bowie’s past. In that respect, he’s just like the rest of us: we can’t escape David Bowie’s past either. The Next Day leaves you wondering why you’d ever want to”Read review
“Reflective, revitalising and luxuriously refined; it’s bloody good Bowie after all”Read review
“The Next Day isn’t great simply because it’s the return of Bowie. It’s great because it’s the return of Bowie’s voice: rich, delicate, smoky, wise”Read review
“Has a strong connection to the late-1970s period when Bowie and producer Tony Visconti made their Berlin trilogy of Low, Heroes and Lodger”Read review
“One has to dig deep and fight uphill to connect here, but that climb results in a rewarding, fascinating listen”Read review
“As astute as ever, casting a ghoulish shadow over sounds and images we know and love”Read review
“Bowie has, with an imperfect but exhilarating album, announced his return to rock’s top table”Read review
“Above all, this album is about songcraft. Rather than reinventing Bowie, it absorbs his past and moves on, hungry for more”Read review
“Only a little better than its two predecessors and probably only Bowie’s best album since Outside, but that’s not to knock what is easily the best mainstream art pop record of recent times”Read review
“Neither enhances nor diminishes anything that came before, it’s merely a sweet coda to a towering career”Read review
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