2023 has been quite the year for Damon Albarn. Not only has the 55-year-old Essex-born singer/songwriter released his eighth album as part of everyone’s favourite cartoon band Gorillaz (Cracker Island), but he’s also reformed Britpop titans Blur for two huge headline shows at London’s Wembley Stadium. Oh, and there’s a new record to show for it. The Ballad Of Darren, out on Parlophone Records on the 21st of July, sees Albarn reunite with his Blur bandmates – guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, and drummer Dave Rowntree – in a collection of beguiling tracks.
Going into a new Blur album, it’s difficult to predict what you’re getting yourself into. Recently speaking with Far Out Magazine, Albarn compared himself to the late David Bowie, suggesting that Bowie “lives on through him.” Whilst many have found this comment outrageously arrogant, it makes sense considering that Albarn is no stranger to a dazzlingly shape-shifting musical career himself. After all, Blur started out in the late 80s as a somewhat disposable halfway-house between Madchester’s baggy grooves and shoe gaze’s unassuming, mop-haired disposition. Throughout the 90s they continued to evolve (unlike a certain other Britpop adversary), chronologically exploring sardonic pop, assertively British, Mod-inspired social commentary, drug-fuelled art-rock, bug-eyed electronic soundscapes, and even world-music orchestration.
It’s been eight years since Blur’s last LP outing. The glittery yet messy The Magic Whip was an album hurriedly stitched together out of studio jams recorded in between gigs in Hong Kong. Blur didn’t expect to make another record, and yet here we are with LP number nine. Cheese-loving, cigarette-sucking bassist Alex James jokes about the unexpected nature of the record in an interview with Rolling Stone: “It really is most unexpected… we didn’t know we were pregnant, and we gave birth in the supermarket car park.” Like the miracle of birth, The Ballad Of Darren is nothing short of a natural beauty: a mellow, yet invigorated piece of work that, across its ten tracks, once again celebrates Blur’s evolution. Read on for a track-by-track deep-dive into The Ballad of Darren.
‘The Ballad’ (3:36)
Opening with a tinny drum machine, aching keys, and a lead vocal full of regret, husk and cigarette smoke, the record’s first stylistic impression is that of Albarn’s last solo LP: 2021’s The Nearer The Fountain, The More Pure The Stream Flows. Whilst it’s a welcome return to the brooding that made Albarn’s record work so well, it initially casts doubt over how original The Ballad Of Darren is to be. Luckily, Albarn’s bandmates save the arrangement from venturing along a well-trodden path. Graham Coxon’s backing harmonies echo with wide-eyed wonder, and his tetchy, wiry slants of guitar weave in and out of the lilting arrangement with precise finesse. Then, along comes Alex James – the bassist extraordinaire of Britpop – shadowing Coxon’s string-picking amidst brief, but whimsical, interludes. His signature Precision bass tone rings out with a newfound yearning and subtle reverb. What else is there to say? Blur are back. And they sound wonderful.
‘St. Charles Square’ (3:55)
A ranting, raving art-rock treat, ‘St. Charles Square’ sounds like a gem dug right out of Scary Monsters-era Bowie. Echoing the cartoonish, make-up-smeared mania of songs such as ‘It’s No Game (No.1)’, ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’, and ‘Fashion’, Blur construct a jagged Frankenstein’s Monster of late 70s/early 80s influence. The song is part Bowie, part Magazine, part Wire. In spite of his unassuming appearance, Coxon’s knack for mutilating guitars whilst writhing around stage floors like an agitated lizard is given centre-stage here. Overdriven soundscapes, impulsive screeching, and an arrangement that never feels quite like it knows where it’s going next: the stage is set for Coxon to do what he does best.
‘Barbaric’ (4:08)
‘Barbaric’ is bound to be a fan-favourite track off this record – a song with such animated swagger that it could easily be at home on a Gorillaz record (it’s difficult to avoid imagining Albarn’s blue-haired, black-eyed alter ego 2D flailing his spindly limbs to the beat). On The Ballad Of Darren’s third song, we find the record at its most youthful and buoyant: a soured relationship gives way to an embittered hopelessness, but this dour subject matter is married contrastingly with a web of guitar glitter. Albarn and Coxon conjure up a song crammed with Smiths-esque dichotomies (never has the term ‘barbaric’ been paired with such a jubilant instrumental since the Morrissey/Marr floor-filler classic ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’), and the rhythm section gallops along. If the story of Blur can be simplified to a series of times in which Coxon has saved Albarn from self-destruction, then ‘Barbarity’ continues the trend. Once again, the despairing singer is offered catharsis through the band he can never quite leave behind.
‘Russian Strings’ (3:38)
Fleeting and floating, ‘Russian Strings’ feels perhaps more of a transition than a track within of itself, much like Parklife’s interlude ‘Far Out’. The arrangement warbles like a drunken slow-dance, as if a pair of lovers are about to inevitably fall down, succumbing to gravity, in the same manner as the lyrics’ “crashing tenement blocks.” ‘Russian Strings’ seeps with the softer side of Blur, reminiscent of songs such as ‘To The End’, ‘Under The Westway’, or ‘Blue Jeans’, and ends with Coxon’s guitar overdubs fading out slowly.
‘The Everglades’ (2:56)
If listeners craving for the ‘cheeky-chappie’ appeal of mid-to-late-90’s ‘lad culture’ – a pigeonhole which Albarn briefly fit into at the height of Britpop – weren’t impressed by ‘Russian Strings’, then their nostalgic thirst for another Parklife is to be well and truly crushed by ‘The Everglades’. Characterised by a naturalistic ambience, an acoustic guitar resembling the folky intimacy of Simon and Garfunkel, and a string section winding its way through the track, it’s about as far as you can get from the ‘Essex-boy’ zeal of ‘Girls & Boys’ or ‘Parklife’. ‘The Everglades’, heavy with regrets, is a tender conclusion to side one of The Ballad Of Darren, a record so far as intriguing and contrasting as its cover art would suggest.
‘The Narcissist’ (4:05)
It’s safe to say that Blur have quite the discography of beloved singles: ‘The Universal’, ‘Beetlebum’, ‘End Of A Century’, ‘Country House’, ‘Song 2’, ‘No Distance Left To Run’, ‘Coffee & TV’… the list is endless. Released back in May, ‘The Narcissist’ instantly sat beside Blur’s greatest hits with ease as a song so endearing, infectious, and well-rounded that it perhaps warrants a revised reissue of The Best of Blur. Whilst The Magic Whip’s lead single ‘Lonesome Street’ hinted at the group’s past knack for Cockney charm and limb-twisting energy, ‘The Narcissist’ instead opts for something more agedly melancholy. With a dose of 90s US alt-rock, 80s jangle pop, and a layering of cheap drum machine sounds with Rowntree’s heavy-footed acoustic backbeats, ‘The Narcissist’ isn’t just the central crowning glory of The Ballad Of Darren, but one of the group’s best ever songs. Don’t believe me? The track being comfortably sandwiched in-between encore tracks ‘Tender’ and ‘The Universal’ in Blur’s recent sets speaks wonders: it’s a new classic, plain and simple.
‘Goodbye Albert’ (4:16)
On ‘Goodbye Albert’, Coxon once again proves that he remains one of the UK’s greatest guitarists. The mix is sprinkled with guitar effects: a tug-of-war match between gentle, Vini Reilly-esque scalings and a rumbling of distortion. An emotional narrative weaves itself through this tension, outside of the lyrics themselves. James’ bass, casting aside the frantic fretboard acrobatics which he made himself known for on tracks like ‘For Tomorrow’ or ‘There’s No Other Way’, glints with a mellowed nuance. As Albarn says goodbye to “you and me”, goodbye to “the depression parade”, it seems as though Blur are saying goodbye to their youth, guiding us into the murkier, more ambiguous parts of the soul that come with age.
‘Far Away Island’ (2:56)
One of the more experimental songs on the record, ‘Far Away Island’ has the same kooky, arthouse interests of Brian Eno’s 70s solo records. As the strings crescendo alongside a hypnotic, childlike vocal, it evokes the eccentric, experimental beauty of classic albums Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), or Another Green World. It’s not going to be a track for everyone, but the image it conjures up – of some sort of Eno-meets-Robinson-Crusoe lost on a desolate, pebbly island, singing themselves to sleep next to a campfire – makes it a worthwhile addition to the album.
‘Avalon’ (3:05)
As the distant desert island musings fade away, a bellowing horn section rings out on the opening to ‘Avalon’ – another surprising aesthetic twist on a record that refuses to be pigeonholed. The change in instrumentation feels triumphant, or at least hesitantly triumphant. The momentary glimmer of triumph is interrupted by soaring fighter planes overheard, captured in one of Albarn’s most dynamic, visceral, and comically-sad musings to date (“And then grey painted aeroplanes fly over on their way to war / I’m dialling in, I’m dialling out, there is darkness at the door / Then I overdo my dose and I don’t even know I’m here anymore”). The Britpop veteran becomes a sort of psychedelic-tinted, Orwellian figure. It’s a fascinating penultimate track, a songwriter jostling with his own conflicted feelings towards the future… “but the glass is still half-full”.
‘The Heights’ (3:23)
An acoustic guitar shimmers in the dark like the opening to Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, and Albarn steps into the mix with a strained, plaintive vocal – a singer who can’t reach the same notes he once could, but approaches his melodies with new, breathier longing. James and Rowntree’s rhythm section falls into place with an all-consuming embrace, and it’s time to end the record on a high. Rowntree’s drums, often overshadowed by electronic rhythms on this record, are given their spotlight moment, marching with command and crispness. ‘The Heights’ shines with well-earned catharsis, although the attempt at a conclusive Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band-esque sensory overload of noise perhaps doesn’t quite work as well as it could. It feels like somewhat of a misstep for Blur to conclude their wonderful new body of work with a wail of feedback and radio static (I’d love to hear the conversation where the bandmates somehow agreed on that), but each to their own.
The Ballad Of Darren is a fascinating album, and one which proves a number of things. Yes, Bowie lives on through Damon Albarn. Yes, Graham Coxon is a bonafide guitar hero, up there with the likes of Johnny Marr. Yes, Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon have just as much chemistry as they did in 1993. And yes, Blur are a band that continue to evolve, mutate, and fascinate. If this is the last Blur record, then it’s a fitting final outing that equally ties up loose ends, settles some scores, and hints at potential futures for the band. Album tour next, please?
