Like a lager-chugging football hoolie with a well-thumbed copy of Camus inside his Burberry puffa, Damon Albarn’s laddish shell – an image as cultivated as any pop star’s you suspect – has masked something darker and weirder.
You caught glimpses, the occasional whiff of something pungently odd, even on Blur’s most outwardly unadventurous output: Parklife was awash with imagery of shape-shifting civil servants and savant pigeons; and The Great Escape, perhaps his least loved work, turns out to have been a dark, phantasmagorical carnival ride through the underbelly of southern English identity. If nobody noticed at the time it was because, in the accompanying videos, Blur were mugging in their Adidas zip-ups and goofing off with Keith Allen. Shout ‘Oi!’ all the time and you can fool almost anyone into believing you’re just on a lark.
Given that Parklife, in particular, was a pop-operatic paean to working-class British culture, it is no surprise that, as his interest in being a rock star waned, Albarn should drop the pretense of being a mere popular entertainer. To that extent, he could be looked on as an English answer to Talking Heads’ David Byrne, who similarly tired of the conventions of rock music and has spent the past 25 years travelling wherever his muse leads (like Albarn’s it has, more often than not, carried him to Africa and the genre we mercifully no longer refer to as ‘world music’).
With Blur’s 2009 reunion and Gorillaz’ 2010 arena tour, it seemed that, having sweated such idiosyncrasies out of his system, Albarn was returning to his day-job. Were that the case, there is evidence that he didn’t particularly enjoy going back.
Blur have a big gig booked for the end of the Olympics; after that, Albarn indicated in a recent interview, the future of both that band and Gorillaz is in doubt (“No, I don’t think so,” was his response when asked whether Blur would ever enter the studio again).
Which brings us to Albarn’s two latest projects, the largely instrumental Rocket Juice And The Moon and Dr Dee, his second opera after 2007’s spectacular, thematically fuggy, Monkey: A Journey To The West.
Of the two, Rocket Juice is the most conventional and, from a certain perspective, less challenging – but perhaps the one that is more straightforwardly enjoyable. A collaboration with Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea and Afro-beat drummer, Tony Allen, the band is all about the groove. Despite cameos from Erkykah Badu and Malian vocalist Fatoumata Diawara there’s hardly any singing – Albarn’s only vocal contribution is a dusky whoo-hoo – and, unless you are taking notes as you listen, one track tends to melt into another. Which is, perhaps, precisely what is intended.
The best moments arrive suddenly and are gone almost before you even notice: Flea’s bass solo on ‘Poison’, Hypnotic Brass ensemble’s hi-NRG horn fugues on ‘Lolo’ and ‘Hey Shooter’. It’s difficult to work out exactly what Rocket Juice And The Moon is supposed to be – one-off indulgence, a post-Gorillaz stab at reinvention, a lark with some pals? Whichever, it’s stealthily impressive, a blast to nod along to.
Drawing on the life of the 16th century occultist, mystic and rumoured inspiration for the character of Prospero in the Tempest, Dr Dee ran for a week at the Manchester International Festival last year. It’s a far riskier piece than the aforementioned Monkey, a fantastical work so detached from anything Albarn has previously done as to make comparisons redundant. In contrast Dee, partly inspired by odd-ball comic guru Alan Moore, returns to the themes that run through Albarn’s work with Blur. It is a study of English identity, and the relationship between the working and ruling classes and the centrality of London in the national psyche.
To untutored ears, on record at least there are moments, it must be said, when Dr Dee – composed by Albarn with the Royal National Theatre’s Rufus Norris – risks sounding like a sort of Blackadder out-take (‘Temptation Comes In The Afternoon’, ’Edward Kelley’). Utilising such authentic Elizabethan instruments as viola de gamba, crumhorn, recorder and lute, the occasional excursions into ‘hey nonny nonny’ land is fine but there is an oddly unsettling effect when Albarn takes lead vocals: hearing the chap from Blur pitch in after five minutes of faux-authentic jester music has a strange effect on the mood. Or it does for me.
There’s an irony here: If Rocket Juice And The Moon arguably suffers from a lack of Albarn, Dr Dee might do with less. Still, if you can look past the project’s idiosyncrasies, it undoubtedly weaves a spell – and ultimately acts as a testament to Damon Albarn’s restless musical spirit.