A heedy fork in the road, The Ballad of Darren is a welcoming return for a brit-pop resurgence of tender mildlife-crises.
Damon Albarn has had quite a busy schedule so far this year. If he’s not pumping out new thermionic themes on Cracker Island or jettisoning off to California’s Coachella with De La Soul’s rendition of Feel Good with his tectonic-electronic side-hustle of Gorillaz, he’s staging a nostalgia-fest of two nights performing at Wembley with Blur. As a sundown comedown to all the people screaming out… all the people, Albarn has followed it up with fittingly, a dreamy crooning of introspective disparity, as The Ballad of Darren allows them to wave a fond farewell to past places and people, all the while looking forward to a rather restrained and tight future.
As both the name and blasé artwork suggests, it’s not an album particularly resembling a celebratory toast to the bands’ return since 2015. But rather, it’s a inward comment on where the guys find themselves. Toiling the heavy waves of sounding like their glory days, compared to the promising waters of where they’re sailing on to, The Ballad of Darren is a resign to hearty, achy shanties. It’s enough to get from the opening track. Seemingly called, The Ballad – “I just looked into my life / And all I saw was that you’re not coming back / Oh, can’t you see when the ballad comes for you / It comes like me?” – it’s resoundly spoken, low-key featuring a fettering of guitar languishes. It may be Blur’s ninth studio record since their foundation, but the sound of …Darren could easily be mistaken cropping up on any nine albums before it. Very much The Mellow Song(s) on 99’s 13.
St. Charles Square is more for those seeking out the wonky and janky old affairs of Beetlebums, while Barbaric seemingly has a it’s funny cause it’s true settling to it with the joyful janglings but Albarn’s drowsy cynicals bring it back to a burning Earth, keeping in tone with the ever-saddening record. Damon’s doom-and-gloom continues to wade through with Russian Strings, not a terribly happy ballad either, with there being nothing in the end, “only dust.” It’s foreboding but equally angelic with choral supports. The Everglades (For Leonard) is another saddening proposition marked with fluttery acoustics and blooming strings jettisoning off a runway far from here. The Narcissist was the pre-single released months ahead of the album drop, and with good reason. A soothing melody hook, it again harks back to Blur’s golden age of tender and tremor but also embarks the aging boys on a new path of fruitful wisdom.
The album begins to close off with Far Away Island – a dystopian working-out of blurry synths and wary guitar strikes, almost as a melancholic partisan to Cracker Island, Gorillaz‘s most recent projects this year. Avalon is another focal point of introspective brain food while finale of The Heights is a fuelling ballad for the senses, hallmarked by the outro of buzzing discordance as Damon struggles to see past the sobriety of what life brings. The record is certainly a welcoming return to the former royalists of Brit-pop, but it’s rather a bit too much with the forlorn ladling of sadness. It’s a side of Blur that fits well as we certainly don’t stay young forever and certainly fits well to Damon’s vocals, but if you’re seeking for a more playful Blur, stick to The Magic Whip.
Goodbye Albert – “we crossed the world and we disappeared – but we’re not all gone just yet,”
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