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| Image source: stagedoor.fm |
Album: The Magic Whip
Artist: Blur
Release Date: April 27, 2015
Genre: Alternative
Track Listing:
1. Lonesome Street – 4:23
2. New World Towers – 4:02
3. Go Out – 4:40
4. Ice Cream Man – 3:23
5. Thought I Was a Spaceman – 6:16
6. I Broadcast – 2:52
7. My Terracotta Heart – 4:05
8. There Are Too Many of Us – 4:26
9. Ghost Ship – 4:59
10. Pyongyang – 5:38
11. Ong Ong – 3:06
12. Mirrorball – 3:37
Rating: 8.1/10
It's British, it's amusing, it's Blur.
Just when you thought Britpop was long gone, the genre has resurfaced into popularity with one of it's leading bands making a comeback after 12 years since their last album Think Tank was released in 2003. With this recent album, there is something sinister and strange that is heard in contrast to the band's usual happy-go-lucky sound that most people would recognize and define as Blur.
What is going on, and what is it with the geographical locations of interest that are referred to in the songs and the album cover that is titled in Traditional Chinese characters?
The album starts off with "Lonesome Street" as its opening song. The first time I heard this song was through the music video that was made for it that didn't feature the band but rather a Chinese dance therapy performance which, I must say, was relaxing to watch. The song sounded like it could have come from one of the band's albums in the 90s, which shows they haven't lost touch with the style that distinguished them. The song is a perfect opener as it pays homage to their signature sound and tells the listener, "Hey, it's us! Let's take you on a feel-good trip to the past!"
As I listened further into the album, their songs began to sound sinister and depressing. The rest of the album after "Lonesome Street" is where its true colors began to appear as a list of songs that are criticisms of modern society and descriptions of yearning and the search for greater meaning against a backdrop of a productive yet dissociated culture that is especially common in developed countries.
The Magic Whip came to being as a result of the band being stranded in Hong Kong for several days after the Tokyo Rocks Music Festival in Japan was cancelled in 2013. The album appears to chronicle the band's experience during their stay including Damon Albarn's solo trip to North Korea and Hong Kong, thus explaining the places of interest in their songs and the distinct album cover. Whether it was their intention or not, the band points out the effects of modernization that is occurring at a rapid pace, and there is no other country that makes a better example of this than the album's subject of interest: China.
The lyrics to the songs are very cryptic as they are written in fragments and make numerous references to mysterious places and things that are only familiar to those who are a part of the culture that is being referenced to. Most of all, the lyrics sound depressing as they mostly describe the ills of modern society. Songs like "New World Towers" and "There Are Too Many of Us" are composed in such a way that the instrumentals capture the depressing realization of what industrialization at a rapid pace has done to society and people. If anything, the impression I got from hearing these songs can be best described as what an 8-hour work day feels like to the hardworking citizen who has committed the next 30 or so years of his/her life to indentured servitude.
This doesn't mean that the album is terrible, because it is far from that. This album is another step in the direction where Blur has chosen to approach matters from a serious point of view in contrast to their satirical approach that was prevalent in their older works. The Magic Whip isn't groundbreaking but it's not mediocre either. It's a comeback for one of Britpop's greatest bands and is a new stage in the genre and band's life where their developments are analogous to that of a teenager who once couldn't take him/herself seriously and has grown into an adult who, after questioning much of the world, has formed a solid opinion on just about anything.
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