4/9/2023 0 Comments Keane strangeland torrentOutside of the context of the opera itself, it’s only Albarn and the more choral elements of the vocals that really make sense here. There is absolutely no way in hell that you’re going to work out the plot of the two hour long opera from listening to this 48-minute album, and at times there’s a somewhat jarring randomness to the sudden rumbling interjection of a baritone or melodramatic sweep of a counter-tenor. The vocal interjections from the opera are the most difficult element of what is essentially a charming semi-instrumental folk record. Nonetheless, the waves of mannered, classically trained voices are about as indie rock as a white tie ball and though Albarn continues to crop up – the Syd Barratt-eque ‘Saturn’ and handclap-laced ‘The Impossible Dream’ could both be from that hypothetical straightforward solo album – he’s one voice among many. The music is essentially a very English sounding folk with a touch of West African instrumentation the non-Albarn singing is closer to Elizabethan polyphony than the Italian model of opera that largely sprang up after Dee’s time. Then a soprano cuts in and we’re in opera territory. It’s a bit too fey to stand much chance of hoovering up the neo-folk dollar, but it is a reminder of how beautifully pure and yearning Albarn’s voice can be, and will probably hook in a few Blur fans who’d assumed this whole record was going to be totally obtuse.Īfter the speedy up/slowy down organ at the start of ‘Oh Spirit Animate Us’ there follows a pretty, acoustic Neil Young-esque bit sung by Albarn. And track two, the equally lovely ‘Apple Carts’, could almost be a straight up single, a finger-picked folk pastoral with just a hint of Wicker Man creepy faux innocence. Instrumental opener ‘The Golden Dawn’ is lovely, mounting, melodic layers of pump organ building from gentle rivulets to a stately torrent, like an English parish vicar taking a stab at drone music. ![]() That accepted, we’re not exactly talking about Der Ring des Nibelungen here. Probably it's an opera thing, although I can’t help but wonder if Parlophone – who have admittedly stood by Albarn through odder projects – might had some hand in packaging Dr Dee to look as little like a bucolic folk opera about an Elizabethan mathematician and occultist as possible. It’s all written and produced by him, but there are a multitude of other musicians on board - notably opera singers - and he only contributes lead vocal to perhaps a third of the record. ![]() It’s something of a surprise that this is the first record serial collaborator Albarn would choose to put out under his own name (2003’s demo set Democrazy excepted). And thus it proves: beneath that conventional exterior, Dr Dee is in fact a collection of songs taken from Albarn’s bucolic folk opera of the same name, a work about the life and times of Elizabethan mathematician and occultist John Dee. Listen to the best of Keane on Apple Music and Spotify.A funny thing about Damon Albarn's solo debut album Dr Dee is how the black and white cover photograph of Albarn looking a bit wistful and singer-songwritery next to a wall is exactly the sort of thing that somebody in 1995 would have guessed would be on the front cover of Damon Albarn's debut solo album.īut this is 2012 and if the last 17 years have taught us anything, it's that the days when Albarn might have been interested in putting out a straight down the line set of Kinks-indebted introspection have passed. Their second album, Under The Iron Sea, released in 2006, also topped the UK album charts and debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200. It is one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history. Topping the UK charts, the album won the 2005 Brit Award for Best British Album and was the second best-selling British album of 2004. Keane first achieved international success with the release of their debut album, Hopes And Fears, in 2004. “It’s a bit different when you’re older and you’ve got kids – your whole little world shifts on its axis.” “ Hopes and Fears was a break-up album too, but it was about a break-up when I was 19,” Rice-Oxley explains. ![]() When Chaplin, bassist Jesse Quin and drummer Richard Hughes heard the songs, they were immediately drawn to them both sonically and lyrically. Meanwhile, Rice-Oxley had written an album’s worth of incredibly personal songs fueled by humour as well as pain. “I found myself wondering how I had come to let this very enigmatic and important relationship in my life drift,” Chaplin said. ![]() Singer Tom Chaplin had released two successful solo albums but missed his old sparring partner Tim Rice-Oxley. “The birth of this new album came as something of a surprise even to the band”, Keane said in a contemporaneous statement. Prior to the Cause & Effect sessions, neither Keane as a unit nor lead singer Tom Chaplin were really expecting to make another record.
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