ALBUM REVIEW

Damon Albarn must be so fucked off right now. over the last 17 years blur have led the britpop revolution, experimented and grown, he’s reinvented pop music with Gorillaz and yet its oasis, a band who consistently dredge out the same stale sound for the last 5,000 years who are getting the lifetime acheivement award at the Brits. So it’s time to pull out your music legend friends and make an album.

What holds this album down is a feeling it’s not finished and that its mainly just two ego’s controlling it. On one hand there’s Damon’s rinky-dink vision of London and on the other Paul Simonen’s ongoing obsession with dub basslines. With this not being a Blur record there was a big opportunity for Simon Tong to step out of Graham Coxon’s shadow and put his own personality into this album but his guitar just sounds like he’s Damon’s puppet (maybe that’s why he’s in Blur now). Then they tether Afrobeat drumming legend Tony Allen to a plodding suburban rock n roll rhythm.

I was greatly looking forward to this album after seeing them live last year, but the album is a massive let down, it feels like a missed opportunity, what could have been a celebration of multi-cultural London, is a dreary dated vision of London. The highlight is Herculean but other than that song there’s nothing else here that inspires me. The first big disappointment of 2007.

Jon (tohellwith)

http://www.thegoodthebadandthequeen.com/