Opening track 'Lonesome Street' is a little slice of everything that Blur do all put together in one song, a fact Stephen Street brought to my attention in the recent interview he did with Graham for Noisy. It has a jaunty groove in the verses with a strong melody and some little feature bits of Graham's vocal. The opening guitar notes before the song remind me of the sprawl of notes that start the album version of 'Coffee & TV'. There are whiffs of classic Blur all over this piece but when we expect the first chorus to come in there's a strange jazzy distraction instead, taking unexpected turns before returning to the verse jaunt. They keep us waiting until the end of the song for the mockney knees-up sing-a-long, but when it arrives it works a treat, repeating the refrain of “going down to lonesome street – ooh-ooh-woo” and throwing in a bit of background whistling for good measure.
'New World Towers' starts off sounding like Damon in full-on musical mode; back in the Blur heyday it was kind of cool how Damon could write a song that would simultaneously sound like pure-Britpop whilst also sounding like it could have been written for a modern version of Oliver! Since Damon has done that for real with Dr Dee and his Chinese Opera version of Monkey it kind of seems out of place, like it may have been intended for another project. The song never really takes off and although it's a lovely, moody slice of audio it seems an odd choice for second track on the album as it loses all the momentum established by 'Lonesome Street'.
'Go Out' is up next, this was the first song to be teased when Blur announced 'The Magic Whip'. At first I wasn't too taken with it but this tough, cynical slow-groover really grows on you. I found I finally 'got' it when I saw them perform it live on Jool's Holland's Later recently, with Damon confidently parading around the studio, mic in hand. It contains a lot of the hallmarks you'd expect to find in one of Blur's upbeat singles but the mood and pace belong to one of their introspective ballads – it's a bit like 'Death Of A Party' with sharp teeth. It's fairly sparse, there's not a lot of meat to flesh out Alex's bass, Graham's guitar and Dave's drums, whereas much of the rest of this album is characterised by dense synthetic instrumentation that hasn't played such a large or obvious role on previous Blur albums.
'Ice Cream Man' is an interesting track and the source of 'The Magic Whip' album title, certainly one of the weirder moments on the album. It builds from sparse beginnings with a weird bloopy, wiggly synth part and acoustic guitar, developing into a nice groove when Graham's electric comes in with funky hammer-on's and slid chords accompanied by the solid bass and drums that Alex James and Dave Rowntree so readily supply. The refrain of 'something new' is a hook that's sure to grow over time. 'Thought I Was A Spaceman' has a muted home demo keyboard drum beat, sparse acoustic guitar and synth cello string chords passing like waves – it wouldn't have sounded out of place in the later studio offerings from The Specials. It's melancholic, thoughtful and narrative. When the acoustic drums and bass kick in with a strong groove it's a bit of a surprise and the mood changes to one that's a little more optimistic but once again they leave us waiting for a sort of chorus and when it comes this time Graham sings it, with a distorted reverberated vocal that sounds like he phoned it in through an intercom in the upper atmosphere.
'I Broadcast' is another track dense with synth parts, it's upbeat and unmistakeably Blur though, with a verse that sounds reminiscent of 'Moving On' from the 'Blur' album. However all those synths make it seem cleaner and more deliberate, slightly undermining the chaotic energy. Weirdly the verses also remind me of Starship's 'We Built This City' – one of several moments on the album when the production resembles complex 80's synth pop. All that's missing is a big rousing sing-a-long but the grown-up Blur don't seem so interested in chasing those choruses any more, they've chosen to create a deeply layered set of musical constructions instead and it may well linger for longer as a result. 'My Terracotta Heart' is one of my favourite tracks on the album, capturing the vibe of a song like 'Hollow Ponds' from Damon's recent 'Everyday Robots' album, but fortified by Graham's 'weeping' electric guitars and an emotive lyric that appears to discuss Damon and Graham's complex fractious relationship; “when we were more like brothers, but that was years ago”. One of the major story lines both about and within the album is the difficulty Damon and Graham seem to have had rebuilding their friendship after years apart when they fell out and Graham left the band. Coxon and Albarn first met in the music portacabin at Stanway Comprehensive and have played together for most of their lives. Their shared musical history is in the DNA of the Blur sound, so this track feels like a poignant centre-point for the whole album.
'There Are Too Many Of Us' is built around a dramatic repeating synth string line with marching drums in the verses, it builds slowly as it discusses fears of overpopulation that you might expect were directly inspired by the band's time in Hong Kong recording and Damon's return to write the lyrics. Strangely this track doesn't quite land for me, perhaps the vocals are a little too heavily processed – you can tell the lyris are important but it is hard to make them out. 'Ghost Ship' has a laid-back 70's soul vibe to it and it's an absolute gem featuring some fantastic, slightly uncharacteristic guitar playing from Graham and, by contrast, some beautifully clear soulful singing from Damon. It's another song that reminds me of a couple of tracks from 'Everyday Robots' this time it's like the love-child of 'Lonely Press Play' and 'Mr Tembo' – but better than either of them in my opinion. It should come as no surprise there are those similarities though, when Blur arrived in the studio in Hong Kong they started working from Damon's laptop full of song sketches, so this Blur album is probably drawn from the same pool of material that led to his solo album. The results have an obviously different flavour though, owing to the fact the band recorded them as jams in the studio, developing Damon's original ideas which have since been curated by Coxon and Street.
'Pyongyang' is a challenging track – a little harder to get a hold of than the rest of the album but sure to be a grower as Blur's vibey thoughtful album tracks often are. It's dark and broody and gives me the same feeling as some of the stuff on David Bowie's 'The Next Day', deeply layered and textural. 'Ong Ong' is another track the band played live on the Jool's Holland show recently, but the sing-a-long 'la-la's seem more depressed and resigned on the record than they did in the flesh. It's ostensibly a cheery Kinks-esque foot-stomper but it also contains a note of melancholy futility and the same claustrophobia that carries throughout the album. It's almost as if every time Damon finds they're getting close to recreating the original Blur blueprint he wants to add a hint of impossibility to underline that this is just an experiment – a footnote rather than a reboot. 'Mirrorball' ends the album with a spacious beat that simultaneously sounds like a slice of Spaghetti Western and a portrait of China with it's combination of reverb-heavy guitar chords and gliding glissando synth strings. There's a luscious sound to it and while they certainly could have gotten away with dragging it out for a few more bars it's a lovely ending to a fantastic collection of songs. I've been a Blur fan for a long time so I feel I have to admit to being a little relieved by 'The Magic Whip'. I was worried that this could easily have been a load of semi-abstract nonsense or a soulless dip into cynical Blur-by-numbers. Instead they've created a mature, complex and memorable record that feels more like Blur for me than 'Think Tank' ever did. However if you're looking for more 'Song 2', 'Girls & Boys' or 'Parklife' you might still be disappointed; 'The Magic Whip' is seeped in the same melancholy introspection that characterised Albarn's 'Everyday Robots' rather than the cheeky, observant loud mouthed youth of those glory days.
Adam Kidd