Damon Albarn – “Mr. Tembo”

Damon Albarn – “Mr. Tembo”

Between his performances at SXSW and the BBC’s 6 Music Festival, as well as the music used in the BBC Culture Show mini-documentary (to say nothing of the actual, officially released singles), Damon Albarn’s forthcoming solo debut LP, Everyday Robots, has basically been available in some form or another for weeks already — and there’s still more than a month till the thing is actually released. Today we’ve got another album track, “Mr. Tembo,” which is much more upbeat than anything else to have been leaked off the LP so far. It builds from a little ukelele strum to a gospel choir-assisted chorus, and even features a little spoken-word section courtesy of Damon. I kind of expected the whole album to be pretty gloomy — and Damon does gloomy really damn well, to be sure — but this is straight-up joyous, and it might be my favorite track so far. Listen.

Everyday Robots is out 4/29 via Warner Bros.

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