Damon Albarn is the new melancholy and beautiful album

Damon Albarn has been doing what one would expect of many other heavy rock stars since the early 2000s: take advantage of the accumulated successful capital to do exactly and only what he likes, without any commercial concern. A dream for any artist. He is free, and from this condition it also happens that Damon makes large numbers, like the millions of copies sold with Gorillaz, but there have also been albums with Malian musicians, the opera on the English occultist John Dee, the two records – beautiful but ignored, the last of which on Brexit – with The Good, The Bad and The Queen.

Then there are projects that are in the middle of the «Albarn scale», as he called it Guardian: if at one end there is Boys and Girls e Feeling Good Inc, that is the pop hits, and on the other hand the opera Dr. Dee, in the middle is the new album, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows (translated: the closer the source, the purer the stream flows). Initially this was to be an album written for the Festival of Lights in Lyon, which had commissioned songs from him giving him carte blanche, and he, who just does what he likes, had decided to work with some musicians from Reykjavik, he wanted his music to end the sensations of days of daydreaming looking at the magnificent Icelandic landscape from the window of his vacation home (Damon has a relationship with Iceland that has been going on since the nineties, when he had an unforgettable journey with the other Blur, but that’s another story).

Then the pandemic came, the world stopped and he gathered two old friends – former Verve guitarist Simon Tong and composer Mike Smith – and decided to turn those recordings into a more coherent pop album, or as he says, “a cohesive meditation on particles, on the present and on the future”. This meditation on particles is in fact a journey that took him from Iceland to Montevideo, from Iran to Devon. The ghost of the recently deceased great friend, percussionist Tony Allen looms over the opening track: “You seemed immortal … you were closer to my heart.” There is obviously the sense of anguish of the lockdown that is expressed directly in some verses (“Am I imprisoned on this island?”, “Am I imprisoned on this island?” The Cormorant), as well as in melancholy and foggy atmospheres. There are no great choruses, there is not a single that the radios could love, there is a jazz saxophone and an old drum machine. In the lyrics, Damon lets the memory go to happier times, with children playing on a beach and abandoned mansions where once upon a time parties were held. Even in the love song Royal Morning Blue, less melancholy than the others, there is an element of anguish: “Nothing like this has ever happened before … stay by my side at the end of the world.”

If there is one thing that Damon Albarn does well, it is to imbue the melodies with a melancholy of his own, as profound as it is poetic, which he has often called part of the English national character. This time, the sadness merges with the sense of bewilderment and anxieties related to the pandemic. The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows it is an emotional experience at times heavy, those who prefer the Damon pop of the more light-hearted Blur or the vivacity of Gorillaz will find themselves displaced, closed in an enveloping and rarefied album. Damon Albarn recently said he was “not against” another Blur reunion, because it would be “a relief compared to what I do now”. Of course, he will continue to do only what he likes, not giving a damn about everything: money, sales, fans. He even cut his hair like an Eighties German: short in front, top and sides and long in back. Yes, a mullet. Stuff that practically does not suit anyone and that he instead sports strong with his natural coolness, and that we can “damonian” interpret as yet another, indifferent, very snobbish, declaration of independence.