David Bowie 40: Lazarus

In addition to recording what turned out to be his last album, the other thing David Bowie was working on the year nobody knew he had terminal cancer was a stage musical based on the character he played in the wacky 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth. If the liner notes are to be believed, the cast recording for Lazarus took place the morning the world found out he was gone.

The musical becomes something of a Bowie revue, pulling together over a dozen tunes from his career, some well-known (“Changes”, “All The Young Dudes”), some not as much (“It’s No Game”, “This Is Not America”), some more recent (“Valentine’s Day”, the title song), and three previously unheard. There’s a rock combo for the backing, with Bowie saxes, and if you ever wanted to hear the guy from Dexter and the subject of How I Met Your Mother sing Bowie, here’s your chance. Try as they might, the men can’t help but add Bowie inflections to their delivery, while Sophia Anne Caruso’s solo spots are pure Broadway kiddie schmaltz. The newer songs stick to the templates on The Next Day and Blackstar, but some of the older ones get arrangements that aren’t exactly karaoke. (Presumably key to the plot are snippets of Ricky Nelson singing “Hello Mary Lou” and Bowie’s own recording of “Sound And Vision”.)

The big deal here, of course, is Bowie’s own versions of those three new songs, added on a bonus disc along with his rendition of the title song, providing 12 precious additional minutes of music as another kind of farewell (and eventually released as the digital-only No Plan EP on its own to celebrate what would have been his 70th birthday, followed by a physical release some weeks later). “No Plan” is moody and melodramatic; “Killing A Little Time” is edgy and clattery; “When I Met You” is romantic and anthemic. All are up to the quality and spirit of the last two albums, and will likely be dissected over the years to come in the absence of any other recordings from his final years. At least they weren’t tacked onto a “special deluxe” reissue of Blackstar, which would have forced us to buy that album again, and would arguably have messed with its unity. (The rating below is for the new songs, as we’re casting—yeah, we said it—aside the versions redone for the musical.)

Lazarus: Original New York Cast Recording (2016)—3