Damon Albarn’s first solo album, more than any of his extensive career’s collaborations, invites you into his head, only to help you understand why it took him 24 years to do so – it’s not a cheery place.
Albarn has been involved in over 12 albums since his time as frontman of Blur, working with Gorillaz, Rocket Juice & the Moon, as well as Anglo-bent rock band The Good, The Bad & The Queen. His musical ventures have seen him spending the last two decades dancing between genres and amalgamating bits of each into a symphonic repertoire of heartbeat-like drum machine and tribal instruments, inspired in equal parts by punk rock, Afrobeats, and the Chinese five-note pentatonic scale.
“Everyday Robots” sees all of that in combination with caustically honest lyrics about everything from a pooping elephant named Mr. Tembo to Albarn’s brief experimentation with heroin. The degree of honesty and sparse composition convey a sense of vulnerability that leaves the listener almost wishing that Albarn had kept them at arm’s length, sad to know just how dark his headspace truly is.
Rest assured, it is a beautiful darkness that he’s willing to share; arrangements are tight and catchy and, while it most likely wont be receiving much radio play, Albarn’s debut is one of the best-arranged albums of the year.
The album takes the listener on an autobiographical tour of sorts. In the deeply meditative track “Hollow Ponds,” Albarn treats his audience to a montage of important moments in his life, beginning with a heat wave in 1976, a first day of grammar school in 1979, and seeing the graffitied phrase “Modern Life Is Rubbish” in 1993, which would later be the name of Blur’s second studio album.
The personal insight does not stop there, however. Albarn, in “You and Me,” possibly the album’s most controversial track, admits to heroin use during the ’90’s. One particular couplet allows for little interpretation. Ambient synth leaves a warm, flowing hole for his voice, almost sonically reminiscent of the hole left behind after shooting up.
He croons: “Tin foil and a lighter, the ship across/ Five days on, two days off.” This “five days on (and) two days off” was his form of self-regulation while harnessing the drug for creative purposes.
In most of his work, Albarn’s sardonic wit has allowed him to distance himself from any lyrical social commentary. The album’s title track makes no attempt at such subtlety. In its first line Albarn sings, “We are everyday robots on our phones/ In the process of getting home.” The track provides minimal accompaniment, allowing the lyrical content to come in loud and clear.
“Lonely Press Play” is a haunting melody about the heartbreak and musics ability to help us transcend it. Sharp piano and low, thumping African drums flank Albarn’s voice as lines like “Because you’re not resolved in your heart/ You’re waiting for me to improve.” Couple it with the album’s sixth track, “The Selfish Giant,” and an auxiliary theme to Albarn’s self-analysis appears: a reflection on the difficulties of maintaining love in a long-term relationship.
With heartbreaking frankness, Albarn reflects, “I had a dream that you were leaving/ It’s hard to be a lover when the TV’s on and there’s nothing in your eyes.”
Like tachycardia, the deep, thumping drums of “Lonely Press Play” build into “Mr. Tembo,” a quirky song about a baby elephant that Albarn was introduced to during a trip to Tanzania that he has formed into an African-inspired, choir-backed ode about the relationship between circumstance and intention. Ukulele heavy and jubilant, it’s almost children’s music. While a break from the picture Albarn seems to be painting with the rest of the album, it somehow seems par for the course when considering this is the same man who created the Chinese folk-inspired opera “Monkey: Journey to the West.”
Overall the album is beautiful. The levity of its instrumentation serves as a much-needed dose of lithium to an otherwise quite melancholic album. His voice comes through clear and unobstructed, confident in the deeply personal story he shares. The album’s cover art captures this sentiment best: Albarn sits upon a stool in a great gray void, a Pagliaccian grin on his face as he smiles at a private joke, a false implication that the listener might find a cause for mirth in the mind he or she is about to enter. Even now, when it is time for his close-up, Albarn avoids eye contact with the camera. But in the end, we have no use for his eyes; “Everyday Robots” already sees him baring his soul.
– Nick LaRosa