Widely regarded as something of an enigma in Gorillaz’s discography, The Fall was infamously recorded on an iPad mid-tour. The album features the predominant work of bandleader Damon Albarn alone (with a short feature from Bobby Womack and several recorded conversations and radio broadcasts). More than enough criticism has been directed at the record for its less than stellar production value, especially graded against the band’s more definitive albums. However, a decade after its release, The Fall finds a new identity within the tumultuousness of 2020.
The insidious mood of the record meets us today in a world where we are hardly strangers to claustrophobia, in a world where government sanctioned lockdown is the norm. Moreover, the DIY efficiency of the album’s production process offers a stern dressing down to any procrastinating writer or producer, stuck inside yet still avoiding their screen. The paradox of the record is that its tone is insular, despite the expansive geography of the landscape over which the songs were written. Albarn composed and wrote the album’s songs mere days apart from each other and completed the record within a month, each track in different cities all whilst touring the USA ( and did I mention the iPad?). Assuredly, folklore surrounding the album is often regarded as more memorable than the record itself. Nonetheless, Gorillaz’s most experimental record is not without its gems.
From the frank poignancy of ‘Revolving Doors’ to the comically minimalist ‘Seattle Yodel’ (clearly the novelty of fast-track songwriting had worn off by the end of the tour), each track on the record embodies its own spatial identity in a manner that almost renders the presence (or lack) of lyrical structures irrelevant. Weaker songs on the album have rightly been criticised for their questionable thematic development, but perhaps it better serves the purpose of the record to view track each as a breath, a snapshot in time, and a sequence of isolated cadenzas, separated by thousands of miles of tarmac. The experience of listening to each piece of music becomes the experience of a sonic art introspective, destined for sulking and lugubrious home bodies, as opposed to being for blaring out at undergrad house parties. After ten years, the album finds us more in the former context than the latter.
When lyrical substance does come, the words are astute – not a letter is wasted. On ‘Amarillo’ Albarn laments the effects of fame and the pressures of major life decisions, singing “I got lost on the highway,” and “Forgive me for what I’ve become.” Meanwhile ‘Revolving Doors’ is a fitting nominee for pessimistic getaway anthem of the decade (“Revolving doors in London to a foggy day in Boston”). No better have we found out how small and universally “foggy” the world is than when a singular viral mutation causes widespread panic and global dreariness. ‘Shy Town’ deals deftly with a discarded lover, whilst the uneasy and hypnotic ‘The Speak It Mountains’ captures an inane chatter of sounds that convey the overwhelming barrage of audio artefacts any producer knows too well, particular when hyper-focused on a singular project. The sonic experiment powerfully complements the mundane peculiarities of tour life.
Ultimately a melancholy and transportive listen, The Fall offers a time machine back to the start of the 2010s- a simpler time perhaps, though certainly not a happier one. Regardless, a journey where one might find momentary solace within another’s leap into the void. The album is most importantly an impressive technical feat and testament to the resourcefulness of artists, no matter where their journey presently stands, and the creative prowess of Albarn himself.
Words by Samm Anga
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