Less is more
Damon Albarn and Florence Welch strip back their sound for their respective releases
Gorillaz: The Now Now
Parlophone
Florence + the Machine: High As Hope
Virgin EMI
Years & Years: Palo Santo
Polydor
The Alarm: Equals
The Twenty First Century Recording Company
There’s a place for the kitchen sink in rock music – where would the likes of The Flaming Lips be without indulging their every cosmic musical whim? But two of this week’s major releases come from artists who are currently appreciating that less is more.
Last year, Gorillaz released the overloaded and overworked
Humanz on which the extensive guest list of young(ish) hip-hop talent overwhelmed the cartoon hosts. Their musical director Damon Albarn now admits that he forgot to invite himself to the party.
The Now Now clocks in at a pithy 40 minutes and is a much more stripped-back, spontaneous and, in places, introspective listen. Without the rap rabble to rouse the listener, it is arguably easier to drift off in this company, but Albarn makes it count with the few guests he has secured.
Esteemed jazz soul singer/guitarist George Benson graces the funky opener Humility, while the peerless Snoop Dogg adds his silky rap vocals to sleek electro number Hollywood alongside returning contributor Jamie Principle. A handful of other tracks, including summery instrumental Lake Zurich, also take a tasty 80s electro funk turn.
But much of the second half of the album is taken up with Albarn’s signature world-weary melancholy.
Idaho is a troubadour reverie, closer to Blur’s dreamier moments like This
Is A Low, while Blur guitarist Graham Coxon crops up on Magic City, where Albarn in his guise as Gorillaz frontman 2D sounds more forlorn than ever.
Florence Welch is not a singer one would associate with restraint but even she is taking a moment on the new and relatively understated
Florence + the Machine album, opening with the sensual, elemental ballad June and delivering the stark sucker punchline “at 17, I started to starve myself” on Hunger.
This latter track is actually one of the musically breezier numbers on the album, with a certain throw-your-shoes-off Kate Bush abandon somewhere in the safe pop production. Elsewhere, it sounds like Welch may have been listening to the economical miracle that is Laura Marling on the fragrant floaty urban whimsy of South London Forever.
Despite its giddy title, there is a lot of calm and space on High As Hope, with Welch resisting the temptation of old to fill everything with sound, and reining in her lusty voice on a series of sparse piano confessionals – at least until the closing full Florence flourish. Patricia gets there a bit quicker with woozy eastern strings circling her tribute to Patti Smith.
Years & Years continue to spice up their sterile synth pop with a spot of pseudo-subversion from thinvoiced frontman Olly Alexander. His two bandmates appear to have been airbrushed out of the promotional picture on Palo Santo (“holy wood” in Spanish), a tinny concept album about a dystopian android society which at least boasts a couple of moderately funky numbers, including lead single Sanctuary with its distinctly R&B flavour and homoerotic theme, to compensate for the reedy bubblegum boy band pop of
If You’re Over Me.
No fear of nine-stone weakling fare from The Alarm whose first album of new material in eight years finds them pretty much where they’ve always been, delivering stirring roots rock infused with worker pride. Following two bouts of cancer, frontman Mike Peters can still muster that rebel soul bellow when required but the songs generally don’t merit the guts with which he invests them. Having said that, their erstwhile peers U2 are so devoid of passion these days that they’ve left these guys to man the barricades as best they still can.
The Now Now clocks in at 40 minutes and is a more stripped-back, spontaneous and introspective listen