The Good, the Bad, and the Queen

Blur is one of my most-loved bands, but for ages their attrac­tion was some­thing of a conun­drum for me. I oscil­lated between thinking the spell it cast was down to Graham Coxon’s guitar playing and that it had to be Damon Albarn’s voice/lyrics/experimentation. Y’know, not that Coxon’s gui­tar­work wasn’t exper­i­mental, for britpop. Still, the group’s semi-dissolution and the resulting solo projects kind of decided the conun­drum for me. I mean, I’ve always felt that Think Tank is an under­rated gem, despite its sev­eral flawed tracks and its overall lack of con­sis­tency and coher­ence. And I think that Graham’s solo records aren’t entirely without merit (just mostly). But it’s clear now that it was that unique chem­istry between the two that made Blur so spe­cial. And, uh, those other guys in the band.

What that means is that, well, if they can’t play nice with each other they’d best be looking for suit­able replace­ment col­lab­o­ra­tors. Damon’s been working on it for a while now, with Gorillaz and his var­ious tribal-choral-field-recording projects and that bizarro-beautiful score to Rav­enous. (If no one minds, let’s take a moment here to ponder the strange par­al­lelism in the career tra­jec­to­ries of Albarn and Thom Yorke [and to a lesser extent, Bono].) So where does he have left to go?

Well, appar­ently he wants to go back to Park­life, but with a totally dif­ferent crew. Word on the internet streets is that his new group (see: post title)–which wikipedia claims is com­prised of “Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve/Blur/Gorillaz gui­tarist Simon Tong, and drummer Tony Allen (Fela Kuti’s band, Africa 70)” and maybe Dangermouse–is working on an album that will pick up where that great ode to British ennui left off. So, what does this whole mess sound like? Well, a little bit like this:

• The Good, the Bad, and the Queen — “Herculean”

To me it sounds pretty much in line with the 13 -> Think Tank pro­gres­sion, but then again who knows how faithful its sound is to that of the album proper? Appar­ently, this track is a pre-pre-single à la Think Tank’s “Don’t Bomb When You’re the Bomb,” which means it might not have much rela­tion to the record at all. Anyhow, it’s catchy enough for now. Catchy enough to keep me interested.