Damon Albarn - Dr Dee

If John Adams ever writes a musical setting for the Latin mass there’s a good chance it will sound like large parts of Damon Albarn's Dr Dee. His efforts may be more listenable however, as Britpop this is clearly not. Nor are there any obvious African influences, given Albarn’s forays into the musical milieu of Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent years. Some sort of Olde English song cycle is maybe the closest reference point with his own vocals being more in line with The Good, The Bad & The Queen than Blur or Gorillaz.

A little online digging reveals that this is in fact the soundtrack for the opera Dr. Dee : An English Opera, from 2009. Albarn it seems is actually singing most of the male vocal parts which probably explains why some work better than others as he needs, I suppose, to adopt different personas. The Dr. in question (John Dee) was close to Elizabeth I of England so the period of time they existed in explains the stylings used in the work.

As with his Journey To The West album, Albarn is in the position of having “pop” writers cover an area of music not normally associated with their respective media organs (the NME apparently viewed a performance of the opera and quite liked it) so possibly he’s doing some good in a crossover sense. In this instance though you’d really already need to be a fan of the type of music on offer (imagine the Blackadder The Second theme tune and you’re close to the sound achieved, particularly on ‘Temptation Comes In the Afternoon’). Having him pictured on the cover outside a block of flats named after the doctor may pay off in a few unwitting purchasers but many of those will be asking “wtf?” before they’re halfway through listening to the thing.

‘The Golden Dawn’ is a beguiling start to the work being just meandering pipe organ and birdsong and track two, ‘Apple Carts’, brings to mind Robert Wyatt’s work whilst the spoken word passages in later tunes (‘Coronation’ for example) give proceedings an air of having tapped into the spirit of the late Stanley Unwin or maybe re-runs of Fingerbobs. Ultimately, however, Albarn’s voice is a negative element in the affair. Whilst on Blur’s or other of his usual kinds of albums the occasional flat vocal parts can be ignored - either because of their brevity or due to the music surrounding them being upbeat enough to compensate - on Dr. Dee there is practically nothing but the vocals and they’re mainly of the pancake variety. Listeners in need of something new that’s closer to their usual expectations from him should instead check out the Rocket Juice & The Moon album that came out in March and so far seems to have slipped under the radar.