Damon Albarn - Democrazy
Reviewed by Bang, December 2003

INSPIRATIONS: John Lennon, Syd Barret, Todd Rundgren

If this were a proper solo album, the only reasonable response would be send Master Albarn on his way with a thick ear and a report card reading 'Must try harder'. However, Democrazy - which is being released with little fanfare on the independent label Albarn co-owns - is not a proper solo album. It's a bunch of ideas and sketches, recorded on a portable four-track studio in hotel rooms during Blur's last US tour. As Albarn sings himself, in the closing track, 'End Of Democrazy', "I stayed up every night singing/When I really should have been sleeping".

Democrazy, essentially, shows the working out without letting us know what the sums are finally going to add up to. As such - and the schoolwork metaphor will be put to a merciful death here - it's a difficult submission to mark.

It's also hard to understand why Albarn has chosen to release this, even in this modest manner. Especially given that much of Democrazy, taken on its own merits, is surreally insubstantial. Several tracks -'Reedz', 'Hymn To Moon' and 'Saz Theory Book' - are brief, apparently aimless instrumentals, musical phrases that he presumably thought attractive enough to record with a view to doing something with them later. All of those, however, resemble Wagner's 'Ring Cycle' when compared to 'Dezert'. It's a muffled, desultory thing - like the sound of the radio next door - and given the circumstances of the recording of Democrazy, this might even be the case.

More interesting are the semi-formed ideas which hint at where Albarn's muse is currently leading him. (Rather ironically, the lo-fi feel of Democrazy means that the one Blur moment it most evokes is Graham Coxon's crackly country song 'You're So Great'.) On that front, there are indicators that the next Blur album will be well worth hearing. 'Gotta Get Down With The Passing Of Time' sounds like the first whisper of mid-life crisis, and verges on orthodox country; after a bit of polishing and buffing, Johnny Cash could have sung it. 'Sub Species Of An American Day' is a deadpan rap which suggests that Jim White might have figured in Blur's on-tour listening. 'I Miss You' is a superior take on the standard road-fever text, capturing the loneliness always engendered by the view from a hotel window of homes in which people are having lives. Best of all is 'Half A Song', a pretty ballad in the 'No Distance Left To Run' mould, whose quality, and title, can only elicit a plea that he should finish the damn thing, and soon.

 (3/5)                                                                                      Andrew Mueller
                                                                                         Typed up by Veikko's Blur Page