A solo comeback, for a magnificent album. Damon Albarn presents Friday November 12 The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows, his second solo album. The prolific leader of Blur and Gorillaz, among others, never short of projects, delivers here a work shaped in Iceland, in which the music describes all the fragility of the environment.
As we knew, Damon Albarn rarely grants himself the luxury of asking. “I like to make more personal records but I do it when I have nothing else on the way, they are like a luxury”, he explains. So for this new album, the confined Englishman landed in his house in Iceland, inspired by nature, the landscape, his loneliness. His song here tells it all.
Far from Gorillaz, his mega-group, even more Blur, detached from operas to write, albums to produce for others, Damon Albarn offered himself a fantasy. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do without ever having the opportunity. Take musicians, set them up in front of me, look out the window with them and try to capture the landscape and the time that is still there. spectacular in Iceland “, describes the artist.
And inevitably, the disc which borrows its title from the environmentalist poet John Clare, took care of a message. “It is the perfect place to meditate on the environment. In the distance the glacier has continued to retreat for the past twenty years”, says the musician.
Damon Albarn storyteller more than singer on a disc covered with a calm beauty. Has the prince of pop of the past thirty years turned the page? “I don’t consciously make sad or happy music. I thrive in a narrow area in between. I always want to be pop., he explains. In fact it is really difficult. The older you get, the harder it is to be considered a pop artist. “ He, as he grew older, decidedly only conceived projects that were as different as they were fascinating.
For the moment, no solo concert for Damon Albarn. But he’ll be fine at the We Love Green festival on June 2, 2022 with Gorillaz.
Damon Albarn releases his second solo album – Report by Yann Bertrand
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