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The Good,
The Bad & The Queen
Reviewed
by
NME, January 2007
Damon Albarn finds his
soul with new supergroup
 Damon
Albarn doesn't half make it easy for people to dislike
him. There he was, onstage at Camden's newly refurbished
Roundhouse venue with his new band (who, apparently, are
"all too old to have a name") performing this, their first
album, in its entirety. But, one minute into 'Three
Changes', he stops proceedings and loudly orders his
partners in crime to "fucking focus". A second version
begins and the same thing happens. Third take, and the
band - consisting of
far-more-legendary-than-anyone-in-fucking-Blur Clash
bassist Paul Simonon, 66-year-old afrobeat pioneer Tony
Allen and no-slouch-either-having-been-in-The-Verve
guitarist Simon Tong - keep their heads firmly down, so as
not to further incur the wrath of their megalomaniacal
leader. The good vibes now lie in tatters. Damon, sensing
the atmosphere, attempts to address the situation with the
pogoing-and-cartoon-gurn routine that got him through
Blur's 'The Great Escape' days. But it's too late. Things
have all gone a bit... well, sinister.
It's a turn of events that perfectly
encapsulates the criticisms most often levelled at the (ex?) Blur
leader. Yes, he is without question one of his or any other generation's
most consistently exciting and innovative, clever and brilliant
songwriters; but he's also always been seen as the fanatically
driven-rather-than-tortured perfectionist - a man ruled by head rather
than heart. He's phenomenally talented, the argument runs, but when was
the last time a Damon Albarn composition made someone cry, or fall in
love, or - aw, fuck it, we're gonna have to make the comparison sooner
or later - feel like they were gonna live forever? The answer,
fantastically, is now.
The signs were there in lead off
download-only single 'Herculean': an eerie, absolutely beautiful (and
let's face it, that's not a description you could level at Gorillaz'
'Dirty Harry' or 'DARE') Air-gone-human shuffle that is as emotional as
it is musically sophisticated. "Everyone's on the way to heaven", mourns
Damon of the post-Armageddon wasteland that surrounds him, sounding more
sincere than he ever has before, backed by more moving music than ever
before.
'The Good, The Bad & The Queen', then,
though billed as "a postcard from London", is as far from a
'Parklife'-style cor-blimey-guv'nor concept record as is possibly
imaginable. Yes, it may often evoke imagery of tower blocks, trilbies
and Charles Dickens, but more noteworthy is the fact that there is more
soul contained within these 12 songs than in every Blur and Gorillaz
record combined
Opener 'History Song' sets the moody,
cinematic, textured, ethereal tone, with a plucked, cheap-sounding
Spanish guitar married to Simonon's crude dub basslines ("punk" if
you're being polite; "a bit ropey" if you're not) and Allen's minimal
tap-tap rhythms, processed to within an inch of their life by producer
Danger Mouse (yeah, him again); the waltzy ''80s Life' and stomping next
single 'Kingdom Of Doom' are just as creepily addictive, not least
because they sound exactly like 'Modern Life Is Rubbish'-era Blur with
Paul Simonon on bass and, er, Tony Allen on drums. With Danger Mouse
prod... well, you get the picture. It's a rare example of an idea that
sounds wankerishly credible on paper, but which in practice feels
perfectly natural.
For all its weird beauty, this is very
much Damon's record - much more so than Gorillaz. Or indeed, Blur. Simon
Tong's guitar is tastefully atmospheric, but ultimately anonymous; Tony
Allen's drums often sound more like the work of a machine; Simonon's
clunk may have been placed deliberately high in the mix by Danger, but
even at its most magically intrusive it fails to divert attention from
the staggering brilliance of Damon's melodies.
On 'Behind The Sun' he strains to the
very tip of his range, sounding more fragile - damaged, even - than ever
before; the psychedelic, Syd Barrett-esque 'Green Fields' could well be
the best thing he's ever written; 'The Bunting Song' (which, like
'Herculean', at times sounds uncannily like Air's 'Talkie Walkie') finds
him yearning for innocence and of childhood days. Yes, haters, you read
that right. But then, would you ever have imagined hearing this social
commentator and sometime futurist singing lines like, "Emptiness in
computers bothers me/We make our own confining time" ('A Soldier's
Tale')? Even if they are supposedly in the third person?
If and when Damon Albarn makes a shit
record, there'll no doubt be queues round the block to lambast him. His
critics'll have to wait though, because with 'The Good, The Bad & The
Queen', he's just laid waste to their long-running last complaint
("Yeah, it's good, but it's not very soulful, is it?"). Damon Albarn?
Yeah, he got soul.
8/10
Hamish MacBain
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