The Slow Boat That Lands On A Misty Sea

Blur “Ong Ong”

When I first heard that Blur was returning with a new album after a long reunion tour phase (which never came to New York and I am still very bitter about that), I was a bit too cautious to feel excited. My fear was that despite working with the members of Blur, who have a very distinct chemistry, Damon Albarn would just have them play the sort of dour and dreary music that has dominated most of his projects over the past several years. Though Blur have recorded many ballads, and some of those rank among their best songs, I think it’s fair to say that the core musical identity of Blur is rather bright and up-tempo, sometimes to the point of feeling rather manic. This is the thing I wanted; this is the thing that’s been missing.

The good news is that a little over half of The Magic Whip sounds like classic Blur while also feeling a bit fresh and different. Graham Coxon’s guitar style on this record is generally in the same zone as where he was on Blur and 13, but it’s not quite the same – he occasionally shifts into a cleaner tone, and there’s some vaguely Asian motifs sprinkled throughout the record. The remainder of the record is the sad sack Albarn you’d expect these days, but even those tracks don’t just feel like they could’ve been on some other Albarn project, and really take advantage of Coxon’s loose-yet-precise style, as well as that of Dave Rowntree and Alex James. Albarn has played with a very wide range of musicians in his career, but this just feels natural. It just sounds like he’s at home on this record.

“Ong Ong” is the best of the new songs. I hear a lot of Kinks in it, and it’s been quite some time since that influence has been obvious in Albarn’s work. What really gets me about this song is how generous it feels – it sounds so loving, so grateful, so earnest. A great deal of Albarn’s work over the years has been rather depressive or world weary, and I think that’s definitely there in the subtext of the song, but what you’re actually hearing here is the sort of joy and yearning that comes from finding someone or something to love in a world that’s always letting you down.

Buy it from Amazon.