An album of not terribly happy ballads: Blur’s The Ballad of Darren reviewed

Bands that have hung around, or gone away and come back again, occupy an increasingly sizeable percentage of pop’s bandwidth. When it comes to making new music, many are happy not to rock the boat, scraping by on the goodwill accumulated from past endeavours. Others strive to present a moving target, enjoying a more evolved, even argumentative, relationship with the sounds of their glory days. Two new albums tackle this dilemma, with varying degrees of success.

Together for the first time since 2015, Blur do a fine job of straddling past and present. Fresh from the emotive nostalgia-fest of two nights performing at Wembley Stadium earlier this month, they have followed up with a tight, strong new record which gestures towards their past while feeling like it belongs in the here and now. ‘This is an aftershock record,’ says singer Damon Albarn. ‘Reflection and comment on where we find ourselves.’

It’s not a terribly happy place, by the sounds of it. The glumness of middle-aged men saying their farewells – to people, places, times, dreams – pervades an album heavy on ballads. The intention is plainly stated in its title and reinforced on the opening track, ‘The Ballad’, which is low-key, tender, resigned. Strange to think that Albarn made his name in the early 1990s as a yelping wide boy; his dreamy croon has always been more suited to capturing the quotidian ache of not-quite-desperate lives.

The attractively dishevelled ‘Russian Strings’ shivers with four-in-the-morning bleakness, the bleached romance of an eastern European skyline. ‘With headphones on you won’t hear that much,’ sings Albarn. ‘There’s nothing in the end only dust.’ On ‘The Everglades (For Leonard)’ strings bloom behind a sweetly sad melody. ‘Far Away Island’ is a woozy circus song with a lovely overlapping chorus.