Blur - The Ballad of Darren
Parlophone
Purveyors of Britpop, Blur, release Album number nine, 'The Ballad of Darren', after an eight-year hiatus. The previous project, 'The Magic Whip', saw the boys return after what was a twelve-year hiatus. The breaks are becoming shorter, as the form is becoming finer. Coincidence? I think not.
The singles - 'The Narcissist' and 'St. Charles Square' - feel like a tease for something that we never really get, but in the best way possible. An unexpected chamber pop aesthetic hangs over TBoD - in a similar vein to The Arctic Monkey's 'Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino'. Gorgeous string arrangements line the walls of the record. Sweeping winds caress the melancholic clouds - shaded blue by the stylings of Albarn and crystallized by the quirky guitar-work of Graham Coxon. Alex James and Dave Rowntree are as effective and efficient as they ever have been - plodding along; maintaining solid and somewhat bubbly rhythms. Blur have always been the sonic embodiment of 'meeting in the middle' - the center of the abstract and the tangible. A place where reality meets the dreamscape; and sometimes where dreams turn to nightmares.
The undercurrents of unrest - or at least the prospect of unrest - always feel close by; the opportunities missed, and those that didn't pan out fester. A reminiscence of times that once were; whether they actually happened or not is anybody's guess. An intimacy is at hand, though it's a distant intimacy. The present moment feels too close - wisps of memories will do. Catch them as they slowly spin up and out of your soul. The effort to catch them just so happens to thwart them in the process - the complex nature of the delicate wash that is the mind. The ebb and flow of the soul gently sways through life. Bob and weave. Bob and weave. The closing moments of TBoD sound like the fading out of view of said memories. The distance has become the defining feature.
'The Ballad of Darren' is Blur doing what Blur do best; pop with an endearing, and often, eccentrically sullen twee twist. A fine return to form - a form that never really faded - from the Blur camp.
'We've lost the feeling that we thought we'd never lose.'
