Single Of The Week: Damon Albarn : The Marvelous Dream

“Hurricane, spit and tornado growl over London today.” The first single from Albarn’s forthcoming solo album is awash with poetic visions of Mother England, expressed in the sweetest honey croon and aching melodic drops against a softly strummed acoustic guitar. It’s a haunting mess of abstract ideas, lifted from a musical project called Dr Dee: An English Opera, which Albarn wrote last year to honour John Dee, a 16th-century mathematician, scientist and philosopher. The lyrics are noticeably different, devotional, but the sound evokes the most delicate moments in the Blur cannon: Miss America, To The End, Strange News From Another Star and the aching No Distance Left to Run. It’s almost painful to hear Damon’s voice so naked again, a bittersweet reminder of something young and beautiful that is lost.