It can be said that Damon Albarn reflects a certain je nais se quoi akin to David Bowie—that is to say, he’s a constant string of influence and unremittingly musical prowess, but his reflection is so definitively British, whereas Bowie is so outerwordly, that Albarn’s Anglophilic tendencies usually inhabit his music as the driving force and soul. It was no different when after a history which, up until then had been quite eventful, especially with the smashing success of Demon Days and his already heady back catalog of collaborations as well as a little band called Blur (he he he), Albarn announced his newest project which had no name, but had come together to record an album simply summed up as The Good, the Bad & the Queen (2007). The band itself was something of a cause célèbre, counting its membership as Paul Simonon (the Clash), Simon Tong (the Verve, Blur, Gorillaz), Tony Allen (Africa 70, Fela Kuti), and Albarn, and because of it’s very hushed creation but star-studded creators, the hype was unbearable. Upon it’s release though, the wait was well deserved as the collective delivered a modern classic in the form of a quiet yet spacious historically-bent concept album known as TGTB&TQ. It is an album that is so imbued with the pure soul of the city it is about - London - that from the first scratchy guitar plucks of “History Song” to the cacophonous maddening finale of “The Good, the Bad & the Queen” the records reeks and effuses a truly British sensibility. But it is not as if the album is rigid and cold, because at times it is rightfully and purposefully so, but as a directorial force in the guise of a bandleader, Albarn knits together a pastiche and collage of such typically but gracefully English trivialities that are so minute in scope but so grand in metaphorical meaning, that the shine and glow with a true poet radiance. Simonon’s bass is thunderous and dripping with dub-inflected pokes while Tong’s guitar is chilling and academically alternative, making use of his reverb tank as both a sound effect as well as a near-literary highlight. Tony Allen’s drumming is snap-tight but groovy, never sacrificing the beat in favor of flash, but never giving up the ghost of an African soul imbued with a certain sense of allegiance with the rest of the group, and Albarn, in his typical mode, is the wistful and politik’d leader, pledging himself to both his craft but also to something much greater than just the music. The Good, the Bad & the Queen, strangely, is one of the most optimistic records of Albarn’s very melodramatic and spottedly-depressed career, and it finds the group looking at the long and nostalgically beautiful lifespan of a city to which they all owe a great deal, but from which they are given so much more.
Listen to “History Song” (Live at St. Denis, France) and “Kingdom of Doom”
Download “The Good, the Bad & the Queen”
