New album
“The Ballad of Darren” – Strong comeback from Blur
Damon Albarn at a concert in Berlin in 2017. photo
© Christophe Gateau/dpa
After a long time, Blur are back with their ninth studio album. Frontman Damon Albarn was inspired by Goethe and Leonard Cohen for the predominantly melancholic songs on “The Ballad Of Darren”. That sounds wonderful.
“The timing is just right,” says Damon Albarn (55) in an interview with the German Press Agency in London. The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist makes it clear that Blur’s eight-year hiatus was necessary. “Graham and I started out in school. It takes big breaks from each other to even remember where you came from. We were just busy too.”
You have to do other things in life too
Guitarist Graham Coxon composed film music and released an album with his band The Waeve. Drummer Dave Rowntree was politically active and recorded his first solo album. Bassist Alex James made cheese on his farm. “You can’t be defined by one thing your whole life,” says Albarn. “Well, you can.” For the Blur members, however, that’s out of the question.
In an interview shortly before two gigantic and celebrated concerts in London’s Wembley Stadium, Albarn seems cool, but at the second appearance in Wembley, the Blur frontman is surprisingly emotional and bursts into tears. “The Ballad Of Darren” also shows the emotional side of the aging successful band.
The eponymous “The Ballad” opens the new long player softly, slowly and a little dreamily. A touch of the 70s resonates. The atmosphere is reminiscent of Air’s fabulous soundtrack for the film “The Virgin Suicides”. “Russian Strings”, “The Everglades”, “Goodbye Albert”, “Far Away Island” and “Avalon” are other ballads that are wonderfully atmospheric, also due to Graham Coxon’s wonderful guitar sounds.
Damon Albarn loves poetry
“I find it deeply melancholic, not just a little bit,” Albarn says of the new album, which, as usual, is mostly penned by him. The melancholy fascinates him – and that the sadness can be concealed by the music, the melody and the words. “I like this place. I guess that can probably be traced back to Goethe. With his poetry, he was one of the first great melancholists, so to speak.”
The versatile singer and songwriter has recently dealt intensively with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He is currently working on an opera using fragments of Goethe’s libretto “Der Zauberflöte Zweyter Part”. “I’m currently learning a lot about Goethe and I’m enjoying his works very much,” says Albarn, who also raves about Federico García Lorca, Rainer Maria Rilke and John Donne. “Poetry and its relationship to music have always been very important to me.”
Hints of 90’s Britpop
The songs on “The Ballad Of Darren” are timeless in a pleasant way. However, the structure of the songs follows the composers of the 60s and 70s. “I guess the chord progression is more like what Burt Bacharach would have done,” confirms Albarn. “In modern pop music, there’s usually two chords, three max. But here the chorus goes straight into a whole different key, which doesn’t happen very often these days. It’s more like classic songwriters.”
The album’s most radio-ready song is “Barbaric,” a soft pop number. Remnants of the classic ’90s Blur sound can be heard on “St. Charles Square.” Thanks to the weird guitar sounds, the cool track is reminiscent of the heyday of Britpop. However, Albarn was inspired by Leonard Cohen. “He is one of the outstanding alchemists when it comes to combining words with melodies,” enthuses the singer.
He wrote the song in Montreal, Canada, in a hotel room overlooking a mural of the legendary Cohen. “He pretty much watched me all day as I wrote. And I felt a lot of pressure to produce something that showed my respect – and my desire to write like Leonard Cohen.”
Darren is kind of an everyman
And who is actually Darren? “Darren is an old friend of ours,” explains Albarn. By the way, the new album is not about Darren himself. His name only appears as a representative in the title. “In a way, he’s each of us, he’s the everyman.”
After their long break, Blur are back impressively and don’t disappoint one bit. “The Ballad Of Darren” is an excellent album by a band that neither wants to rest on the laurels of past successes nor tries desperately to build on them. Damon Albarn and Co. only make music when they have something to offer musically. For that reason alone, the timing of her comeback is just right.