Album Review: Blur - The Ballad of Darren (2023)

Craig Stephen on the recent-ish Blur return …

In a recent review on this site, I noted that The Libertines were no longer spiky, noisy larrikins but had matured into almost sensible chaps. Likewise, Blur are now at arms and legs length from their manic Britpop days.

It’s hardly a radical about-turn, as the mood of The Ballad of Darren is to some degree an extension of the cynicism and tales of life of a middle age quartet that permeated its predecessor, 2015’s The Magic Whip (has it really been that long?).

 The friction of a band that has seen too much of each other and has led to the period of absence remains. But it is what spurs them to some extent. And yet it’s also clear that there is immense platonic love within the band. These are brothers to all intents and that means squabbles and hugs galore.

The first thing to note about The Ballad of Darren, is the cover. A lone, skinny male swimmer in an outdoor pool without another paddler or spectator around but plenty of empty chairs including the one the lifeguard should be sat at. Behind the pool are grey skies and the threat of rain. There’s a sense of isolation and troubles ahead. 

So, what does the record say? Third track ‘Barbaric’ has elements of gothic literature: “Empty grove, winter darkness. We are taking down the scaffolds very soon. We have lost the feeling that we’d never lose. It is barbaric darling.”

As we continue through the ten tracks, some rather slow, some rousing, we discover a tone of resignation, with Damon Albarn singing about moving on from a broken relationship(s). But from the standpoint that this has all happened before. And so, there’s little point getting too depressed about it, is there?  

It's quite an adult work, not in the sense that there are words that airline pilots should never utter (though ‘St Charles Square’ begins with “I fucked up”) but of a realism that comes with reaching and extending beyond middle age. ‘The Everglades’, for example, exhibits a sense of regret that is natural when you look into the past. “Many paths I’d wish I’d taken. Many times I thought I’d break,” sings Albarn in that near monosyllabic manner he has developed over recent years. ‘Country House’ and ‘Pop Life’ seem decades ago. As, of course, they were. But just as we are wondering if the narrator is consumed by a maudlin mid-life crisis, we are informed that “And calmer days will arrive.”

Some reviewers have referenced the tortured break-up album of 13 from 1999, the album that dimmed Blur’s star, but this feels like it should have been recorded by one of Albarn’s side projects, The Good the Bad And The Queen, of which Clash bassist Paul Simonon was a member. That act, which only released two albums in more than a decade, was an art project, with the second album Merrie England an attempt to understand where the country was post-Brexit and concluding that there was little to enthuse about.

Albarn’s melodies are beautifully formed and he forms a call and response liaison with guitarist Graham Coxon that adds a little frisson to the record. The production is polished but not overdone, and the band’s chemistry is the right measure to ensure that the 36 minutes glide magnificently by. 

As I put the record back in the sleeve, I look at the cover again. And I see not a scene of desolation but of peacefulness, of the kind of solitude we all aspire to at times. The swimmer is reaching his goals. Whatever they may be.