England, Damon Albarn and the Art of Melancholy

3.7/5 ( ratings)

England, Damon Albarn & The Art of Melancholy is the first full-length serious study of one of Britain’s greatest living artists. Blending biography, psychogeography and cultural criticism, Dylan Moore explores each of Albarn’s bands, collaborations and projects against a rapidly changing country that forms the backdrop to them all. What emerges is not only an impressionistic portrait of an endlessly intriguing musician, but something akin to the work of Albarn himself: a snapshot of contemporary England, ‘a melancholic commentary on a country in crazy transition.’

In the summer of 1995, Damon Albarn seemed to have Britain at his feet. Blur had been awarded a record four Brits, Parklife had sold a million records and new single ‘Country House’ had won a much-publicised chart battle with rivals Oasis. Even Prime Minister-in-waiting Tony Blair courted his company.
But within months, relationships within the band and Albarn’s personal life had begun to fray. Blur’s subsequent change of direction, a new relationship and subsequent fatherhood, and a trip with Oxfam to Mali were to mark the beginning of an artistic renaissance that was to see Albarn emerge as one of the most critically-lauded musicians in the world. Gorillaz, a cartoon concept band, were to sell more than Blur ever did, while The Good, The Bad and The Queen – a song-cycle about London – confirmed Albarn owed as much to William Blake as to David Bowie.

In the summer of 2012, Damon Albarn appeared in his own Dr Dee, an English Opera, and travelled around Britain on a train called the Africa Express. At Hyde Park, Blur returned to the stage, closing the London Olympics with songs that still capture the unique atmosphere of a nation that has never quite been sure what to think of itself.

Framed by the events of England’s glorious summer, what Albarn has called ‘the golden twilight’ of Queen Elizabeth II, England, Damon Albarn & The Art of Melancholy traces the decline of the English seaside town and the disappearance of the village green, documents the boredom, binge-drinking and violence of suburban commuter-belt towns, explores the layered histories of London’s music halls and examines how even Albarn’s globetrotting sojourns – to Iceland, America, China and Mali – always seem to evoke a very English melancholy.