David Bowie: The Next Day - 2013

Almost a month ago, David Bowie decided to surprise everyone by releasing a new single on his 66th birthday, followed by his brand new album that was released a couple a weeks later.
Being a big fan of David Bowie, I couldn't resist. Truth is that I am a fan mostly of his early works, and I like a few of his later albums, but a new album from D.Bowie is always something very interesting for me. Well, not this time I'm afraid...
The bad news started with the single 'where are we now'. I found that song uninspired and shallow, and I let's not mention the really bad video clip. (You can read what I wrote in this blog about that song if you click here: David Bowie: Where are we now )
Let's take a look at the cover of the album... It is actually the cover of 'Heroes' with a blank square in the middle. hmmmm Ok, not really important I know. Symbolically it might mean "There are no heroes today." but would that be accurate? Or even more importantly, would that be "Bowie Original" enough?
Ok then, let's take a look at the music. (Which is important.)
I listened to the record 3-4 times before I decided that I should write a review. But before that, I made a small search in the web, reading other people's reviews. And there I was really surprised! When I saw many reviews with 4 & 5 stars (with 5 being the highest). And here is the question that I really wanted to ask to all those people: 'If you put 4 & 5 stars on this record, how many stars you would put to records like 'Ziggy Stardust', Space Oddity', 'Alladin Sane' etc? 20 stars? Because this is the actual difference!
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that this is a bad record, because it isn't. But it is not a good one either! (For my personal liking of course). Do you know what it is?
Well, if this record was a salad, I could say that the basic ingredients are the ones that were used in 'Hours' and 'Heathen', with a nostalgic dressing from 'Heroes'. I hope you get my point here...
The production is very good, the musicians are very good, but the inspiration is absent. So what we really have here is 14 songs that are not really good or really bad, but they are performed very good!
If this is one of your criterias for liking an album, then go ahead and buy it! As for the ones that want something more inspired, I suggest to listen to the record first, and decide later.
If I have to rate this record, I'm affraid I can't give more than 2.5 Stars. (out of 5).
I would really like to see comments from people here or at G+ about this record, just to see what are your thoughts on this album. (In case you know the songs of course.)
  Here I will post 2 videos from this new album, so you can listen and have a small idea...