11 November 2021 17:30
When Damon Albarn was a child, he had a recurring dream: he was flying over a black beach. Then he became an adult and forgot about those night visions. One day in 1997, he was in a hotel room on a tour with Blur and watched a National Geographic report on Iceland showing the island’s landscapes and its great black beaches. At that point he thought he absolutely had to go. He booked the flight, grabbed his typewriter and guitar, and left for Reykjavík. Iceland soon became a second home for him, to the point where he was given citizenship a few months ago. “I had never before been to a place with so much free space, where you could easily escape from humanity,” he told Nation Geographic in an interview released in August.
Years later, Iceland has rewarded him by giving him the inspiration for his second solo album, The nearer the fountain, more pure the stream flows, out November 12. It is the island’s landscapes – such as the Esjan mountain which even gives its title to an instrumental piece, and the Snæfellsjökull glacier which inspired Jules Verne when writing Journey to the Center of the Earth – to have inspired the new pieces, which were born as instrumental orchestral sketches. Taking advantage of the time available during the lockdown, the British musician turned them into songs.
But, as always in the case of Albarn, there is never a single source of inspiration. The disc title, for example, is inspired by Love and memory, a work of the nineteenth-century British poet John Clare. The text of the opening passage, the title track, begins with a minimalist Brian Eno-style rug and then displays a sumptuous orchestral arrangement. Albarn’s voice, each year deeper and more expressive, alternates low register and falsetto, giving us back the sad words of John Clare, which speak of mourning, aging, mountains and rivers. And one immediately thinks of the tragedy of the pandemic, but also of the death of the great Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, his friend and collaborator who died in April 2020.
The text of the next piece, The cormorant, begins like this: “I am imprisoned on an island, I tried to swim away but the current was too strong”. It is not Iceland, but the United Kingdom. It is not a black sand beach, but the rocky shore of Devon, where Albarn has another home and where he spent his time lockdown. The cormorant contains one of the most poignant images of the disc: a cruise ship is anchored near the shore, empty due to the pandemic. But not the whole record is so dark: Royal morning blue for example, she is more light-hearted, with bass and horns on the shields, and recalls her parallel project The Good, The Bad and the Queen, the one in which she played with Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong and drummer Tony Allen.
In Daft wader the specter of Eno returns, evoked by the gloomy initial synthesizers, while in The tower of Montevideo, inspired by the Palacio Salvo, a building from the 1920s in the center of the Uruguayan capital, an all-Latin American melancholy stands out, underlined by winds and a relaxed rhythmic movement. In the rhythmic Polaris and in the final Particles, built on field recordings and on an electric piano phrasing, Iceland returns instead, with its black beaches and a more sunny, almost optimistic atmosphere.
Albarn’s first solo album, Everyday robots, a reflection on the pervasiveness of digital technologies in our lives, had been one of the high points of his career simply because it was made up of great songs. It showed the best intimate side of the British musician. The charm of The nearer the fountain, more pure the stream flows it stems from a similar approach, but to this it adds a deep connection with nature and further maturity. His writing has managed to paint new colors, taking advantage of the orchestra and flirting at times with classical music.
The sonic descriptions of Iceland and the UK are so powerful and clear that they reach a universal register: The nearer the fountain, more pure the stream flows for example it can also be interpreted as a record on climate change, even if it does not address the issue head on. He doesn’t need it. In the mournful way Albarn celebrates Icelandic landscapes, you feel his ghost wandering. And it’s kind of the same principle as Plastic beach, the 2010 Gorillaz record full of environmental and anti-imperialist themes, even if declined with the language of surreal pop. After all, John Clare, the poet who this time illuminated Albarn’s creativity, was also renamed “the poet of the environmental crisis 200 years ago” and witnessed a period of enormous changes for rural England at the time due to the revolution industrial.
Like all high-level works, The nearer the fountain, more pure the stream flows has many interpretations. Also for this reason it is one of the best albums released in 2021. Perhaps the time has come to forget just for a moment about Blur and Gorillaz, and to put Damon Albarn alongside the greatest songwriters of the last decades. Assuming he cares something about being in that whole there. Probably, as always, he is already over, projected towards the next project, the next trip, the next island to explore.
.