Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 22/01/07
Label: Parlophone

When Blur launched "Parklife" in 1994, the press were serenaded by the band at a London greyhound track. Damon Albarn and Alex James presumably held court to the chuckling media through a succession of lagers, a cheeky line of coke in the bogs and a rambling speech of some considerable ambition and attitude from the singer. Genial but petrified guitarist Graham Coxon probably fretted behind his betting slip, the only person there paranoid enough to see what was coming, for him, Blur, Britpop and, at a stretch, this country and its people.

Back then, all Albarn had to worry about was taking on Oasis, swerving the occasional "Badhead" and convincing Coxon he really did want to dress up as a milk man. Britpop was, of course, all about celebration. It is perhaps this era he recalls on "Green Fields", the thin but emotionally heavy ballad towards the close of "The Good, The Bad & The Queen". Written "on the Goldhawk Road…before the war and the tidal wave engulfed us all", it is now 2007. And a very different, post 9/11, world.

Fronted as a London record and the "successor" to "Parklife", this weary LP might also be considered "Modern Life Is Still Rubbish Wherever You Live". From "Bang" to "Blue Jeans", Albarn has always sung about London or Anytown UK and the troubled psyche of its people. So, beyond the project's subterfuge - talk of supergroups, Tony Allen, Paul Simonen and Danger Mouse's sparse contributions - this feels like a loosely-linked, musically rich, compelling but resigned dispatch, where mortality and maturity demand bigger themes

The cumbersome moniker's nobility check sits cutely with the 'concept', like the cover of 'London' burning. And, of course, Albarn is smart, as you might expect from a musical polymath. Drawing vivid pictures from base sonic tools, "The Good, The Bad & The Queen" is awash with atmosphere - rusty synths, found sounds, distant, crackling interference and static - and spindly, hypnotic melodies, amidst storytelling stitched together with classic British imagery.

"History Song" sets the burdened tone, the word "melancholy" drifting into ear-shot amid a dread guitar motif and whirring Wurlitzer. "80's Life"'s initial promise of a knees-up down the Roman Road is quickly dispelled, Albarn declaring: "I don't want to live a war that's got no end in our time". Meanwhile, the two singles are like apocalypse #1 and #2. "Kingdom Of Doom" crashes ravens into The Tower Of London to a soundtrack of Blur's "Sing" via "Essex Dogs", while "Herculean" tells us "everyone is on their way to heaven", playing out to an angel's choir as if to soundtrack that very ascent.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Actually it is, as key signifiers of what we were - "The Bunting Song" - and what we've become - "A Soldier's Tale" - are amplified. Particularly compelling is "Northern Whale", which recalls the big fish that got trapped in the Thames and "wouldn't leave until all England's tears are done", to tug at our collective anxiety. So, while unlikely to ignite the zeitgeist as "Parklife" once did, "The Good, The Bad & The Queen" probably says just as much about Britain 13 years on. Now, how about that new Blur album with Graham Coxon please?

    by Ben Gilbert