John Clare was one of the hottest poets in early 19th century England, his book Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery even sold more than William Wordsworth and John Keats. Unfortunately, however, his fame was clouded by his mental state, which would have forced him to live more than twenty years of his life in an asylum. One of Clare’s most cherished themes is the transience of history, a tremendously topical concept over the past year and a half. It may also be for this reason that Damon Albarn’s second solo album borrows its title from a poem by the English poet: The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows.
The mastermind behind Blur – the heroes of Cool Britannia – and the cartoon band Gorillaz; the catalyst of the Africa Express project and the group The Bad, The Good and The Queen – with sacred monsters of the caliber of Paul Simonon, Simon Tong and the late Tony Allen – got back into motion during the lockdown.
Fragility, loss and (re) birth
Albarn thus wrote eleven songs that dig into his soul and, at the same time, cross a condition that all of us have experienced in the last twenty-one months. Initially conceived as an orchestral work inspired by Icelandic landscapes, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows explores universal themes such as fragility, loss and (re) birth.
A great vocal performance and a labyrinth of emotions
Sumptuous orchestrations and a minimalist pop support the voice of Damon Albarn, never so intense and in search of a breath of light. He is perceived in the fractals of The Cormorant and in the organized chaos of Combustion. Polaris immerses the listener in an experimental amniotic fluid made of hope, the concluding Particles is pure poetry. In between existential meditations on what the British artist himself defines the “carousel of my life”, the spectacle of nature that transforms rain into sleet and trust in better times because, quoting Clare: “The year has its winter as well as its May ». A balance in which sadness and happiness, tragedy and comedy, darkness and brightness chase each other; a labyrinth of emotions that have unpredictable developments and therefore can also be scary.When Albarn released his first solo album, Everyday Robots in 2014, he was a forty-year-old who was dealing with his past, on the sidelines of a reflection on the relationship between the human and the technology that has forever changed interpersonal relationships. The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows is one of the records that tells the pandemic without mentioning it, preferring an escapism that uses the Icelandic landscape as inspiration and metaphor for the human condition. To all this is added the artistic depth of one of the most multifaceted talents that pop music has ever had. In this album, as Thornton wrote about Clare’s prose, “we see reflected there in sharp clarity the very essence of a period, a place, a language, a culture and a time.”
