Looking like standing stones, out there on our own

January 25, 2014 10:20 AM

Damon Albarn has released a video for the title track from his upcoming (and first-ever!) solo album, Everyday Robots. Rolling Stone has asked him questions about it. He recently performed a few new songs and some old ones at the Sundance Film Festival. Aitor Throup, a London-based menswear designer, is the album's "creative director."
posted by timshel (7 comments total)

A solo album? Albarn's career has been such an unlikely progression of unlikeliness (indie to britpop to artrock to hip hop to world music to low-key supergroup to opera composer) that doing something as normal as releasing a solo album seems willfully bizarre.
posted by Kattullus at 10:45 AM on January 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you like his old stuff better than his new stuff (or just as much), some kind soul has uploaded 2003's Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop, which is primarily about the Blur-Oasis wars of the 1990s I believe.
posted by Mezentian at 3:33 PM on January 25, 2014

He sort of released a solo album before, although I'm not sure anyone really noticed.
posted by dng at 3:48 PM on January 25, 2014

"The songs on Democrazy are very sketchy, and some of the songs are unfinished in the way that they simply end by turning off the sound completely."

And this was an official release? Huh.
posted by Mezentian at 4:00 PM on January 25, 2014

And this was an official release? Huh.

I think, officially, it was a double-EP. So it was an official release but not an official album. But yeah, it is kinda shit. It's interesting enough to hear a bit of how one of the most prolifically talented song-writers of his generation works. But, in the end, a major reason for putting in the office-hours he mentions in the linked interview is to get stuff up to standard before it's released.
posted by howfar at 5:41 PM on January 25, 2014

It's interesting enough to hear a bit of how one of the most prolifically talented song-writers of his generation works.

That used to be the role of bootlegs, or, in this era of "lets extract every ounce of blood from this stone" the posthumous naked-cash-grab releases that are responsible for the recent output of Johnny Cash/Tupac/The Beatles, whoever.

I'm with you, though. It's fascinating to hear the evolution of songs from home demos and scraps (like what The Cure chucked on their remastered albums) with the final product.

And, however I've felt about Albarn's work over the decades, it's always been interesting. Except that damn woohoo song.
posted by Mezentian at 5:51 PM on January 25, 2014

I bought Democrazy. It was pretty cheap, if I remember correctly, and even if I didn't listen to it very often it was interesting to hear. I think of it like reading the notebook of a writer. In later works, especially Gorillaz songs, ideas from it popped up.
posted by Kattullus at 2:19 AM on January 26, 2014