Damon Albarn
Album: Dr Dee
Label: Parlophone
Tracks: 18
Website: http://www.parlophone.co.uk

The music from Albarn's curious Elizabethan folk opera about the long life and strange times of the fabled courtier, astrologer, alchemist and spy is now asked to stand on its own two feet. It's a bold move, and depending on your view of Albarn, one that he should either be applauded or lambasted for.

The opera was a collaboration with director Rufus Norris for Manchester International Festival, but as with his audacious Chinese excursion, Monkey: A Journey to the West, there's a mountain of Blur-ry baggage to climb over first. Make the effort and the journey will surely be rewarded though for Albarn has a way with melody and lyrics that is rooted in the sense of pastoral melancholy that underpins nearly all classic English songwriting of the last 50 years. (That is, if you subscribe to the lineage of Lennon/McCartney, Davies, Bowie, Difford/Tillbrook, Partridge, Morrissey/Marr, Turner as being classic English songwriting.)

The most recognisably Albarn-esque songs here, Apple Carts and The Marvellous Dream, are closer in spirit to his The Good, The Bad & The Queen project - indeed, both feature drummer Tony Allen - but they could easily find common ground with Blur's most fragile ballads and even Gorillaz more whimsical moments.

Elsewhere, Albarn commands an orchestra with aplomb - at least as successfully as the likes of Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello did with their 'classical' debuts. The music has feeling and texture, it's emotive, engaging and comfortable to be with. Of course, without the story, the staging and the actorly inserts, it becomes background music to whatever else you are doing, but is none the less worthy for that.

Dr Dee will no doubt divide critics and fans - is it an indulgence too far for this thoroughly modern polymath, or the sound of genius taking flight? Who's to say, but without the likes of Damon Albarn to challenge preconceptions and stretch the boundaries of what's possible for a middle-aged former Britpop icon, the musical landscape would be hugely diminished.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk