A canned rhythm, a piano, melancholy, strings: The first Blur album since “The Magic Whip” eight years ago begins as a follow-up to Damon Albarn’s bucolic solo album “The Nearer The Fountain…” (2021). One could think that the singer had hijacked the band. In the second piece, finally, the redeeming Schrammelguitar. Reminds of Bowie/Fripp of the late seventies, the late Beatles in the background. Taken together, it sounds like – Blur.
A band that hasn’t been a band in the romantic sense for a long time
With “Barbaric” they then present their best pop song since “Coffee & TV”. twee and melody. “We have lost the feeling that we thought we’d never lose/ Now where are we going?” Albarn sings. It’s about separation, about aging, between the lines but probably also about a band that hasn’t been a band in the romantic sense for a long time, but a project of four guys who used to play in a band together. Perhaps the wily “The Narcissist” is also about this, when Albarn (with Graham Coxon echoing) sings: “Looked in the mirror/ So many people standing there/ I walked towards them/ Into the floodlights.”
While on “The Magic Whip” Coxon and regular producer Stephen Street were at least musically in charge, on “The Ballad Of Darren” everything seems to be in Albarn’s hands – and those of the new producer, James Ford, already an Albarn ally on the last Gorillaz album. Ford isn’t the live-in-studio type, he’s not interested in intuitive interaction, he’s looking for new ways to use musicians’ talents. Coxon, most recently also a soundtrack composer, seems to orchestrate the songs like movie scenes instead of driving them forward with riffs, as was once his way.
It’s a slightly modernistic sound that defines the album, which retreats into contemplation after “Barbaric”. “Russian Strings”, “The Everglades”, dedicated to Leonard Cohen, and “Avalon”, decorated with horns, reflect on the world situation and deal with old friendships, farewells and crises. “Seeing through the coma in our lives,” Albarn sings at the very end. “Something too bright out there/ You can’t even see it/ Are we running out of time?” Blur have awakened from their coma and are trying to remember who they were, who they are. It’s touching.
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