Josh Recommends: On Melancholy Hill by Gorillaz

“Up on melancholy hill

There’s a plastic tree

Are you here with me?

Just looking out on the day

Of another dream”.

These are the opening lyrics to On Melancholy Hill, performed by Damon Albarn — the mastermind behind the animated band Gorillaz. He doesn’t sing as much as crooned. Soft, low, and intimate; his voice is a melody of snowflakes tumbling from the sky. It’s at once both broad and personal.

The plastic tree in question is a metaphor (because of course it is). Albarn is quick to inform us that we can’t get what we want, but we can have him. Our dreams, as lush as they may be, will always be out of reach. Instead, we must settle for what we can make. The tree stands alone on melancholy hill, made of plastic yes, but still real. Plastic is unnatural but not unreal.

Manatees swim alongside submarines in On Melancholy Hill. Objects both natural and fabricated diffusing through the water until they are indistinguishable. If you look closely, you’ll spot the difference. Don’t look, says Albarn. Maybe your dream doesn’t look the way you thought it would, but does it matter how it looks when it’s real?

That’s the melancholy of On Melancholy Hill. An imperfect dream that’s real is better than a perfect one that we can never reach. We are carried through the song by synths. All it takes to find our dream is to “Just looking out at the day”. That something so small should be enough seems wrong. We’ve always been led to believe that dreams are colossal undertakings.

But our dream can be small. That’s enough, says Albarn, “When you’re close to me”. That’s what On Melancholy Hill is, a small window that Albarn has opened, so that we might share a few minutes of dreaming with him. Finding the plastic tree, a small sliver of fabricated happiness is as real as a dream needs to be.

That it’s just a song, and the tree is made of plastic doesn’t matter really.

The presence is better than the absence.