Description
Before lockdown, Damon Albarn was in Iceland, following an approach from Lyon’s prestigious Fête des Lumieres to premiere an open commission, a blank brief. Ever since he sought sanctuary there at the height of his fame with Blur, Albarn wanted to reciprocate the love that Reykjavik’s artistic community had shown him: The title track is an expansive piece filled with lush orchestral elements and the steady pick of an acoustic guitar, although there’s no shortage of subtly strange synths and other textural sounds to give the tune an unsettling edge.
The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows — which takes its title from a John Clare poem, “Love and Memory” — marks Albarn’s second solo album, following 2014’s Everyday Robots. The record was originally intended to be an orchestral piece inspired by the landscapes of Iceland, but Albarn expanded the project into a full-length album during lockdown last year.
Albarn said that he was thinking about the North Star in the creation of the album: “In Iceland, when a storm comes in, birds get separated a lot, but in the end, they always find each other. It felt like that was true to what we were going through as well.”
This feels like a delicate love letter to human frailty and hope.
