Flatbasset Radio's Album Of The Week for the week of May 5th-11th, 2014:
Damon Albarn - Everyday Robots
01. Everyday Robots
02. Hostiles
03. Lonely Press Play
04. Mr Tembo
05. Parakeet
06. The Selfish Giant
07. You And Me
08. Hollow Ponds
09. Seven High
10. Photographs (You Are Taking Now)
11. The History Of A Cheating Heart
12. Heavy Seas Of Love
If you've been following along with my AOTW posts you probably know that I tend to stick to Minnesota-based artists. There are, however, a handful of artists whose work excites me to the point that I just can't wait to spend a week exploring.
Have a look at these Last.fm stats:
Blur - 1,075 plays
Gorillaz - 511 plays
The Good, The Bad, & The Queen - 222 plays
That's just over 1,800 plays for Mr. Damon Albarn in my library. And that's just since 2007.
Anyway, I bring it up to illustrate just how excited I am for Albarn's first official solo album. 2014 is filled with new releases by some of my favorite artists, but I can say with almost complete certainty that Everyday Robots will be the album that soundtracks my year. All of the work he's done under those names listed above have managed to be both instantly gratifying and rewarding in the long run. I'll spend this week with Everyday Robots, but I'd be genuinely surprised if I wasn't still discovering little moments on the album one, two, or three years from now.
I'm not just excited from a long-time-fan standpoint. I've listened to the album a couple of times now (and spoiled my appetite with the stripped down, BBC2 version of "Lonely Press Play" over the last month or so), and part of what makes the album special is that it's relevant to the world around us. It's not just a nostalgia trip.
Albarn spends the majority of the album struggling with how technology, people, & the physical world relate to each other. As somebody who spent the majority of his youth in a pre-internet age, I find myself thinking about these same issues as I get older. Albarn doesn't offer much in the way of answers. Quite the opposite. Considering the way the album is peppered with electronic percussion & synth loops, Albarn is essentially conceding that he's not here to fight the flood of technology. He clearly realizes how foolish that is because A) technology's march is unstoppable and B) technology isn't inherently bad. He's not going full Jack-White-Records-An-Album-In-A-Phone-Booth here. Like most of us, he's trying to sort through the questions of real life and virtual life and, like most of us, he's struggling.
Everyday Robots is a thoughtful album from a thoughtful man. It's no wonder this is the first one he's recorded under his given name. No other would be appropriate.
