The frontman of many bands from Blur to Gorillaz returns with a new solo album suffused with slow beautiful, tender melancholy, falling piano chord progressions, jazz elements, electronica, gentle beats and wistful images. Standard track Royal Morning Blue is perhaps the most upbeat in pace, and reminiscent of something from Plastic Beach, but is coloured by images of happier times clouded by the Covid pandemic": “Nothing like this had ever happened before … stay by my side at the end of the world.” Albarn is no doubt still suffering from the death of his great friend and collaborator Tony Allen. Polaris is a gorgeous, floatingly quiet number, as is the title track, while Combustion has a thumping, anarchic jazz flavour. Daft Wader has an uplifting beautiful tenderness before muffling darkness descends, reversing the track Darkness To Light. The Tower of Montevideo is an eccentric travelogue of clattering sounds, voices and the returning clicky drum machine and gentle saxophone. Giraffe Trumpet Sea is an evocative, slow, postcard instrumental of rumbling keyboards. Overall, perhaps flavoured ever shifting meteorological moods that must come with recording in his Reykjavik studio, one of Albarn’s most beautiful releases, suffused with a sadness he makes his very own. Out on Transgressive.
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