Reality

Throughout his 30-plus-year career, David Bowie has earned a deserved reputation for chasing musical fashions. Unlike most, he has often caught and made something of them, but Bowie’s latest, Reality—like its predecessor, Heathen—finds the one-time musical chameleon settling into his own skin. The album’s first treat is a suitably manic cover of Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso,” which shows off his current fondness for unhinged rock guitar, a predilection that courses through “Looking for Water” and “Reality,” as well. These are hardly bold new steps for Bowie, but it’s refreshing to hear him embracing his past rather than running from it. It’s not hard to trace the outlines of Ziggy Stardust’s glam-rock drama in the melancholy “Loneliest Guy”; and with the bluesy moan of a harmonica, soulful back-up singers, and Bowie riding his voice from monotone bleat to theatrical vamp, the standout “She’ll Drive the Big Car” revisits his Young Americans period. Ultimately, Reality is not the record that’ll make you forget Bowie’s 1970s classics, but it may remind you what was so good about them.