Look Up Here, I’m in Heaven: February 2026

Written By Stephen Bands

I’ll be free, just like that bluebird

On the day I started writing this, my government allowed a paramilitary unit to murder someone…else. Another. The third actively. The ninth in total. They will get away with it because the “opposition” will write a strongly worded letter and then give up.

It’s like no one wants to impress Jodie Foster anymore.

The Listen List

An update about what’s out now and what people around the internet are talking about

Missed Items from 2025

  • A Paradise in the Hold by Yazz Ahmed - arabic jazz - shout out to Deep Cuts for naming this his album of 2025. It is an amazing, expansive set of some truly beautiful musicianship, centered around the theme of ancient pearl diving.

  • Closer EP by Mercy Girl - darkwave - usually I have my ear pretty frimly rooted to the darkwave/EBM ground (see my #1 album of 2025, Marie Davidson’s City of Clowns), but I totally missed this gauzy, noisy, fog-filled, shoegazy set of dark beats and Italo-disco synths from newcomers Mercy Girl. Thanks, Tylor!

January

** must-listen

The Rewind

A look back at a favorite from (at least five) years past

So, for as shite a year as this one is sure to turn out to be, I figured, why not start with a real downer, the album David Bowie wrote about his own death, then died two days after releasing it.

★ [Blackstar]

David Bowie

Jazz-Rock | 2016

I apologize in advance, but this piece is going to be get pretty dark.

When The Next Day came out in 2013, the first video I saw for any of the songs was “Stars (Are Out Tonight).” It took the form of a short film starring Bowie and Tilda Swinton, two people who have looked essentially the same the entire time I’ve been alive (or, in Swinton’s case, since I first saw her in a movie). And in that video, they did indeed look exactly the same as I remembered.

When I saw the video for “Blackstar,” the first single released for its eponymous album, just three years later, something was obviously very wrong.

That song, the title track and album opener, is a masterpiece of jazz-rock fusion, restrained rage in performance, and utterly, utterly brilliant mixing and production. At nearly 10-minutes it’s the Kubrickian monolith the rest of the album will anchor to and reference throughout it’s run. Beginning with an ethereal guitar and synth selection, it paints the mood as both gloom and wonder, while Bowie paints occult imagery with his fantastical lyrics: “In the villa of Ormen / stands a solitary candle / … / On the day of execution / All the women kneel and smile / At the center of it all / Your eyes.” Here, the drum mixing is genius, making them the most prominent instrument by far, even beyond Bowie’s vocals, but somehow not obtrusive or overwhelming—front and center, but still purely rhythm.

The second section changes the entire mood of the song, changing from solemn to almost-absurdly cheerful, as the bass powers in with an upbeat walking line, and Bowie gleefully describes the never-ending cycle of savior-turned-martyr-replaced-by-new-savior of both religious and political movements that also reflects the mercurial nature of pop stardom. The drums, still very much the most prominent piece, change to pound out a four-on-the-floor dance beat.

Those drums stay the same as the rest of the instrumentation turns dark again, changing the dance beat into that of a death march. Bowie’s abstruse, occult lyrics return, making the once-fantastical picture—now with the 4/4 march time—turn all too real. You were just observing, but now you must join the ritual. As Bowie wraps up his tale, the horns, flutes, guitars, and drums slowly fade away and fall apart, and a long, ominous synth drone lingers, stretching out into the void.

Bowie’s false-start breaths begin “‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore,” before the band kicks in with a tune that sounds more like the classic 70’s/80’s Bowie we knew and loved. His lyrics abstractly tell the tale of a First World War soldier who falls in love with a prostitute, only to realize that, for her, it was just business. His actions and story are neither romantic nor defensible, as he breaks down, becomes violent, and then submits to resignation. As his story devolves, the band around him becomes wilder.

“Lazarus,” perhaps the most well known song from this album, is also, by a wide margin, it’s darkest, and most beautiful. The long, slow saxophone passages, Bowie’s prophetic poetry, the stunning imagery. “Look up here, I’m in heaven,” he begins, on an album many would not hear until after Bowie had passed. Then his extreme emotion on the delivery of the breakdown blurs anger, despair, and relief: “This way or no way, you know I’ll be free / Just like that bluebird, now ain’t that just like me.” When he repeats again, “oh, I’ll be free,” I cry. Every time, I cry. Death will free him from this world, from the prison of this body.

“Sue (Or In a Season of Crime)” could easily be a b-side from one of Bowie’s most underrated projects, Outside, with its icy production and the juxtaposition of hyper-speed instrumental under calm, cool vocals. It follows much the same tale of unrequited fascination as “‘Tis a Pity…,” but now from an even creepier perspective, as our main character makes domesticity plans with a woman who not only has not agreed to them, but almost certainly would never want them (and might be forced into them? Yikes). As Bowie’s tale ends, the band flies into a wild fit of a breakdown, masterfully energizing the album at its middle point while simultaneously mirroring the POV character’s psychotic break.

The creepiness continues on “Girl Loves Me,” though this time, it’s a body horror as Bowie opaquely alludes to his feelings of extreme pain and pain-relief-drug-induced disorientation while being treated for, then in the process of dying from cancer. Prophetically, the close of the song hears him repeating “where the fuck did Monday go?” He died in the very, very early hours of a Monday morning, having never seen his last Monday in full. The track ends with another brilliant band breakdown, this time echoing Bowie’s mental state as he feels himself slipping away.

Then we have maybe the most beautiful song on the album, “Dollar Days,” the last song Bowie ever wrote. Listening to it now brings tears to my eyes as the stunningly beautiful string passages and light piano back Bowie’s poetry about being unable to travel to see England one last time, but also his acceptance that this life is entirely transitory: “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to / It’s nothing to me.” He also uses it as a letter to us: while he excoriates the corporate music world for hounding him while he was sick and dying, he never blamed his fans for wondering what was going on; “We bitches tear our magazines / Those oligarchs with foaming mouths come now and then / Can’t believe for just one second I’m forgetting you.” After a breathtaking saxophone solo, he begins to repeat the lines “I’m trying to / I’m dying to;” he wanted so badly to play for us one last time, to give us one more taste of magic. But, he’s dying, too.

To end such a somber album on the major-chord uplift that is “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” is such a wonderful decision. Yes, certainly the subject matter of the song—Bowie essentially giving his listeners his final words—is incredibly macabre, but that he decided to frame it in such a positive light is the real gift. Even the opening harmonica references his 1977 Low track, “A New Career in a New Town,” a song all about moving on and starting again. “I know something’s very wrong / A pulse returns the prodigal sons,” Bowie begins, again referencing his own impending death. In the end, however, he knows he loves, is loved, and will never be forgotten: “This is all I ever meant / That’s the message that I sent / I can’t give everything away.”

It has taken me ten years to come to terms with the fact that he’s gone, and I’m still not sure I have. Everything in the whole world went to shit in the months and years following Bowie’s unimaginable death (I 100% seriously thought he was immortal): Prince followed him not much later, Brexit, Nazi Orange Moron, Covid, January 6th, Ukraine, Palestine, Nazi Orange Moron 2: The Death of America featuring literal goon squads executing people in the street. Knowing what I know about Bowie’s spiritualism and general vivacity for life, I doubt he cursed us on the way out; but that light, his light, the light that shone brightest and lit up the musical way for thousands of artists who idolized him, and tens of millions of listeners who loved him, that light went out, and everything—everything—in the world went dark and will never light up again. It is as if God died.

Now Playing

A quick look at my personal favorite recent release

Slutworld

Slut Intent

Hardcore Punk

Given the current state of things, what with the Secret Police summarily executing people in the street and all, hardcore punk is the only sound willing to meet the moment. And this blistering debut from (poignantly) Minneapolis-based Slut Intent does that and so much more.

I cannot overstate how much righteous anger is expressed here. At every moment, it sound like each member is responsible for their own punk band, quintupling the sound output in both volume and ferocity. And who could blame them; a hardcore band from Minneapolis has more than enough justification to burn the whole world down.

My only criticism—and it’s an incredibly flimsy one at that—is that I wish there was more. In the classic punk way, the entire album is only 18 ear-piercing, whiplash-inducing minutes. All the better to play over and over again at the announcement of every new atrocity committed by this administration, I guess.

To quote another punk favorite of mine: smash it, ruin it, destroy the world.

Up Next

What’s coming out in the next few weeks?

  • My Days of 58 by Bill Calahan

  • Deadline by BlackPink

  • The Romantic by Bruno Mars

  • Wuthering Heights Soundtrack by Charli XCX

  • Love Is Not Enough by Converge

  • The Mountain by Gorillaz

  • Hen’s Teeth by Iron & Wine

  • URGH by Mandy, Indiana

  • Nothing’s About to Happen to Me by Mitski

  • No Lube So Rude by Peaches

  • Normal Isn’t by Puscifer

  • The Great Satan by Rob Zombie

  • Tenterhooks by Silversun Pickups

Well, what releases did I miss? What’s coming out soon that you can’t wait for?

And as always, call your senators and representatives, fuck ICE, release the Epstein files, and happy listening!

Stephen Bands
Next

The Best Albums of 2025