Blur – ‘The Ballad of Darren’ album review: Legends find moments of beauty on a downer record
After nearly a full decade away, which followed in the wake of another decade-long break/reunion cycle, Blur are finally back with their ninth studio album, The Ballad of Darren. The eight-year gap between the band’s latest release and their most recent studio album, 2015’s The Magic Whip, isn’t quite the longest gap between Blur releases, but it does find the band in a completely new headspace.
With sombre looks at confusion, self-image, and the loss of love, The Ballad of Darren is a new Blur for a new decade. It would be too easy to call this album “adult” or “mature”, although it certainly doesn’t have any of the whimsy that poked through on most older Blur records. Similarly, the focus of guitars and rock music has been stripped back to only the barest of elements, leaving stark drum machines and mournful pianos as the primary tools with which to communicate.
That being said, the clear joy that comes from Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon reuniting their voices in harmony once again is palpable. On the opening track, ‘The Ballad’, the stage is set for a set of languid mid-tempo dirges. But Albarn’s more depressing thoughts are elevated by psychedelic harmonies, xylophones, and trippy orchestral arrangements.
You get the feeling that had his bandmates not been around, Albarn would be making another album similar to his meditative and beautiful 2021 solo effort, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows. Instead, Coxon (and, to a lesser extent, James and Rowntree) add colour and vibrancy to the proceedings that edge The Ballad of Darren back to the band’s more psychedelic side.
If nothing else, you have to applaud Albarn for having no desire to revisit the band’s past. The only track that makes any attempt at reaching into the sounds of the band’s past is ‘St. Charles Square’. The track is dominated by Coxon’s wild guitar textures and stomping rhythms courtesy of Alex James and Dave Rowntree. In fact, it’s probably the only track on the album that could be considered joyous and upbeat, despite Albarn’s biting observations on recycled old trends.
Albarn has never been one to simply let age get the better of him. Especially with his other main project, Gorillaz, Albarn has been stemming the tide of father time, along with most expectations of how rockstars approach music past their typical prime. The Ballad of Darren picks up the pieces of what can get left behind when you’re constantly moving forward while, appropriately, continuing to move forward at the same time. So when Albarn claims that “every generation has its guided poseurs”, you’d be forgiven for thinking he sounded old for the first since… ever.
It’s unquestionable that Albarn is dealing with some intense emotions throughout the album. ‘Barbaric’ lays it on thick with its core message: “We have lost the feelings that we thought we’d never lose.” Whether he’s sending you off on ‘Goodbye Albert’ or bearing his soul on ‘The Everglades’, Albarn brings the mood way down to offer his thoughts on losing purpose, finding solace, and stumbling along the trail of life without a clear direction forward.
For the most part, the rest of the band follows him down those muted pathways. An icy chill hangs over The Ballad of Darren, leaving ‘The Narccisist’ as the album’s most accessible track for those who don’t want to think about the faults in their own lives. Even then, the mask of acting and self-absorption gets peeled back in a way that’s neither funny nor tongue-in-cheek. Albarn stops short of leaving too many breadcrumbs back to real life, but the impact is the same whether you go digging into it or not.
There’s no getting around the fact that the new Blur album is a major downer. It’s alienating and unflinching about its complete lack of interest in pop melodies, jubilant anthems, or nostalgia. Anything resembling bravado or cockiness or snotty rock and roll fun is completely absent. In its place, four middle-aged men attempt to connect with the world around them and themselves. It’s a thorny, dreary exercise, but it also had its moments of beauty and insight that shine through on even the most nebulous and cold moments.
Had the album been truly optimistic about the future, it would have ended on ‘Far Away Island’. The rest of the band picks up Albarn’s downbeat but resilient sense of hope and elevates it into something truly majestic. Albarn promises that he’s not lost, and for the first time on the album, he sounds like he means it. But then, the unfulfilled strains of ‘Avalon’ come in, brought home by the lonely finale of ‘The Heights’.
Albarn’s confusion doesn’t extend over to the musical side of the equation. Blur are all in fine form as musicians on The Ballad of Darren, taking notes from Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool and their own clattering ode to discontent, Think Tank. Wild key changes and wonky chord changes, the likes of which have become signature Blur, are still found on The Ballad of Darren. But they’re coated in something more restrained and subdued than anything else Blur has ever done. It’s certainly not always successful, but it never feels like anyone is forcing the sound toward anything recognisable as Blur.
Albarn clearly has both the pipes and perspective to captain this change of direction. Especially on a song like ‘Avalon’, Albarn is fully comfortable with the age in his voice. The brattiness of his youth is gone, while the falsetto notes sound yearning and weathered. As the album dissolves into pure noise during the coda of ‘The Heights’, a sudden end leaves will leave you cold and confused. That’s a guarantee.
It may not be the most heartwarming album of the year, but the fearlessness and unflinching emotion that fills up The Ballad of Darren is more than enough to place it proudly within the Blur canon. The dreary melancholy that overwhelms The Ballad of Darren will be off-putting and uninteresting to anyone who either isn’t already a dedicated fan or prefers to live in a time before Blur became a part-time entity. Blur themselves don’t seem at all fazed at appealing to those people, preferring to reward their followers with something truly different and uncompromising.
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