The Fall in Bloomington, MN

The hook to
The Fall
is that it's the first high-profile album to be recorded entirely on Apple's iPad,
Damon Albarn
assembling these 15 song sketches as the
Gorillaz
tour rolled across America in the fall of 2010. In that sense,
is not dissimilar from his limited-edition 2003 solo excursion
Democrazy
, which was also recorded in hotel rooms while on tour, yet
has a higher profile -- it's not a vinyl-only fan club release, it can be freely streamed from the
official site and can be downloaded as part of a subscription package -- and thanks to the high-quality iPad apps it sounds polished, if not quite finished. Spectral hooks float in and out of the haze, sometimes the drum loops add definition, but for the most part
is a rolling, moody aural travelogue, its song titles referencing specific cities (
"Phoner to Arizona,"
"Detroit,"
"The Snake in Dallas,"
"Aspen Forest,"
"Seattle Yodel"
), yet the music feels attached to no specific place -- it feels like a reflection of its time, namely, the autumn
spent touring the U.S. It's an aural journal, a sonic sketchbook that carries much of the same palette as
Plastic Beach
, yet it's muted to the point that all the colors smear, the music taking on the same washed-out impressionistic qualities of
The Good, the Bad & the Queen
. Appealing as this may be,
winds up a little ephemeral, its pleasures as fleeting as the scenery passing outside the windows of a tour bus. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine