Bowie’s final boxed set celebrates music legend

David Bowie opened his first album of the century s Heathen with a low croon of It s the beginning of an end And nothing has changed Everything has changed Over glitchy computer beats and a light wash of synths Bowie outlined his late-period artistic thesis What would change From the beginning of his end to his final album Bowie would abandon his chase of the modern his effort to incorporate emerging sonic trends What wouldn t His devotion to craft On Bowie s final vinyl box set the -LP I Can t Give Everything Away - the chameleon generally gives up fashion in favor of hooky honest intense songs focused on aging The word generally carries a good amount of weight here considering a less adventurous Bowie is still more adventurous than of pop acts The sixth installment in a series of Bowie boxes that encapsulate eras I Can t Give Everything Away is loaded with exclusives including the four-LP Montreux Jazz Festival live set And the exclusives and non-album stuff is great The A Reality Tour live album is Bowie at his majority energetic and charismatic b-side God Bless the Girl wonderfully winks back at his Young Americans r b phase But the quartet of studio albums Heathen s Reality s The Next Day s Blackstar define Bowie s elder statesman introspection Bowie s reflections on family friendship fame and bereavement dominate Heathen Ballads midtempo drones and slowly unfurling crescendos frame lyrics that nod to his past Chosen of us will unfailingly stay behind Down in space it s consistently and present the resigned goodbye of Everyone Says Hi Reality takes on even bigger stuff like well reality To match the reach the highs are higher Never Get Old mixes old-school space rock with big guitars and a huge vocal howling with specific cheek And there s never gonna be enough money And there s never gonna be enough drugs And I m never ever gonna get old But he manages plenty of intimacy In a flat voice barely climbing above the flat melody he repeats All the days of my life All the days I owe you over and over again on Days Several thought Reality would be Bowie s last record so when The Next Day arrived a decade later it was a revelation The late-career gem paired strength and creativity in a way not seen since his s dominance He filled the LP with aggressive rants ugly guitar and the shriek on the title track of Here I am not quite dying My body left to rot in a hollow tree He also made room for tight hooks The Stars Are Out Tonight would have been a smash if he d issued it four decades earlier And the artistic burst came with nostalgia crowded with melancholy Where Are We Now and messages of how modern isolation leads to tragedy Valentine s Day Bowie disclosed Blackstar on his th birthday and two days before he died on Jan His last years seemed to lead right to the anti-pop and honesty of Blackstar Equal parts art rock and experimental jazz the record abandoned the mainstream The title track opens the affair by lurching and creeping forward for ten minutes with odd off-putting lyrics Other cuts start as pop songs before crashing into atonal messes and freak rock chaos It s amazing and an amazing sonic backdrop for songs about alienation broken relationships and death Suffering from cancer Bowie must have known this was the end of the end Maybe it made him want to put an exclamation point on his body of work Ostensibly it spurred him to record what sounds like a self-penned obituary Lazarus with its lonely saxophone line tugging the melody through a dreamy space and Bowie trilling Look up here I m in heaven I ve got scars that can t be seen I ve got drama can t be stolen Everybody knows me now