Damon Albarn
The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
Transgressive
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Leisure—the first album from the English quartet Blur—landed in shops on August 26, 1991. Released through Food Records, a smaller subsidiary arm of the EMI label, the collection was met with mixed notices but sold steadily enough.

No one knew it then, least of all Blur themselves—Damon Albarn (lead vocals/keyboards), Graham Coxon (guitar/backing vocals), Alex James (bass), Dave Rowntree (drums)—but Leisure was the initiating chapter in a series of projects from the foursome that went on to define an incredible era in British popular music.

But the band’s mercurial leader wanted more and in the three decades following his initial rise to prominence, he certainly got his wish. Creatively restless, Albarn darted between at least two supergroups (The Good, The Bad & The Queen and Rocket Juice & The Moon) whilst scoring film and stage play productions. Additionally, large scale efforts for both Blur and Gorillaz occurred as well. Amid all that activity Albarn still found time to go it alone on Everyday Robots, his solo debut hosted by Parlophone and Warner Bros. Records in 2014.

Everyday Robots saw the writer-musician continue to chart a singularly progressive pop path that, while refreshingly linear in this instance, remained just a little bit weird. And wonderfully so! The album would not make too much commercial noise, but it further confirmed the musician’s voracious exploratory appetites.

Six years on from Everyday Robots, Albarn is back with his second solo outing, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows, sanctioned by the boutique imprint Transgressive Records. Returning for a moment to his first long player, at press time Albarn spoke fervently about how that affair was a personal endeavor meant to study the link between man and nature. To this writer’s ear, Everyday Robots felt more like a loose batch of hymns dedicated to modern urban living, albeit through the lens of experienced adulthood.

My assessment isn’t meant to dismiss, diminish or distort Albarn’s original intent with that lush, foregoing exercise, but to draw a line between it and its successor. From its John Clare borrowed appellation, to its landscape photography art direction, on over to its overall windswept sound, Albarn looks to have finally captured the desired elemental muse on The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows. Inspiration for this raft of tunes is dually drawn from Icelandic terrain and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bulk of the personal-to-abstract song texts and filmic production for this sophomore set have been masterminded by the Blur/Gorillaz frontman himself, but that commitment to collaboration is still an essential facet to Albarn’s creative process. He is joined by German conductor André de Ridder and British instrumentalists Simon Tong and Mike Smith. Together, they construct the esoteric breadth and dimension that defines The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Streams Flows.

Beginning with the grand sweep of its title track, Albarn demonstrates that establishing atmosphere is something he’s always had a knack for. He goes a step further with that method by pivoting into the exotica sprawl of “The Cormorant” before dropping dead center into the disco-punk excursion “Royal Morning Blue.” The opening triptych of The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows is dizzying in its display of Albarn’s sonic authority.

Much of the music—sourced from various genre provenances such as pop-soul (“Darkness to Light”), folktronica (“The Tower of Montevideo”), and alternative (“Polaris”)—won’t be unfamiliar to anyone who has followed Albarn’s journey for the last 30 years. What’s different this time around is how he structures these selections; pieces are given space to compositionally flow around that ever-handsome croon, but nothing wears out its welcome.

Even the three mesmeric instrumentals slotted onto the record as its fourth, seventh and ninth entries respectively—“Combustion,” “Esja,” “Giraffe Trumpet Sea”—have been sequenced accordingly to provide the listener with a moment to catch their breath before trekking back into the other emotional, lyric-led content on the LP. Everything, seemingly, has its place and that keeps the art-pop edge of The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows sharp rather than dull with over-indulgence.

The lone exception to this rule is “Huldufólk,” a hidden number tucked behind the gorgeous balladic closer “Particles,” which meanders into a 19-minute bloat of aimless tropicália rhythms and vocal tics. However, Albarn has been prone to these occasional bouts of solipsism in the past. Ultimately, with “Huldufólk” not attached to the album proper, this cut does not splinter it.

The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Streams Flows breaks no new ground, instead it expands on Albarn’s recognizable inclinations with more eccentric imagination. Given his penchant for the experimental, one must commend him for such continued devotion to making music without boundaries.

Notable Tracks: “Esja” | “The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows” | “Particles” | “Royal Morning Blue”

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