Damon Albarn has been branded a dictator, a dilettante, even a bit daft. But to be fair, the guy's biggest mistake since entering the post-Blur era has been his failure to recognize it as the post-Blur era. So even as he globetrots to Mali or grooves in Gorillaz, everything Albarn does feels a little bit like a side project, which unfortunately casts his often quite good music as an afterthought rather than the real deal.
If perception is such a big part of the game, though, then Albarn has stacked things in his favor with the Good, the Bad & the Queen-- another name, another band, this one with something for nearly everyone because it features someone for nearly everyone. On bass, Clash veteran Paul Simonon. On guitar, Simon Tong, late of the Verve. On drums, the unimpeachable Afrobeat master Tony Allen. Behind the boards, somewhere, the ubiquitous, beloved Danger Mouse. And Albarn himself on top, his ego and voice the would-be X-factor that ties these disparate kindred souls together.
A name like the Good, the Bad & the Queen, awkward though it may be, implies a certain degree of fun to be had, and on its face you'd think the all-star cast would cinch it, but that's not what Commander Albarn and crew are up to. Feel Bad, Inc. would be a more appropriate moniker for this moody and often dreary outfit. To call the doom-laden tracks on the self-titled disc downbeat would be an understatement. Downtrodden is more like it, as Albarn has (subversively? deviously? deliriously?) instructed or encouraged these purveyors of pulsating grooves to slow things down to a narcotic crawl for most of the record's duration. The results are cohesive almost by default, considering how monochromatic the bulk of the disc comes off. Yet monochrome by design isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially when you're out to challenge rather than entertain.
No doubt, it's risky business to follow Gorillaz's well-selling and critically lauded Demon Days with music designed to move you emotionally rather than physically. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction courses through The Good, the Bad & the Queen, with a mumbly Albarn forcing you to lean deep into the murk to decipher his downer words. "History Song" sets the mood, opening with a simple acoustic guitar motif that's soon fleshed out-- barely-- by the submarine bass, haunted backing vocals, and a surprisingly restrained Allen skittering along. "80s Life" throws in rudimentary piano. And for the most part, back and forth the tracks go, reveling in simplicity despite the surplus of talented contributors, never once shaking free of the self-imposed shackles. Even the melodies sound intuitive and unfinished, as if Albarn didn't feel the need to elaborate on whatever spare demos he unearthed that gave birth to this album.
If there's a direct musical antecedent to Albarn mood music of this bent it's the early Blur track "Sing" (most prominently enlisted on the Trainspotting soundtrack), albeit bolstered by Simonon's dubby throb and set on the same paranoid, post-apocalyptic landscape of the two Gorillaz discs. Likewise, "The Northern Whale" and "The Bunting Song" are as prototypically, provincially English as anything by Blur as well, but they sound like sad, elegiac celebrations of what once was rather than what is, reminiscent in mood of Parklife's "This Is a Low". "The medicine man is here 24-7/ You can get it fast in Armageddon," moans Albarn in the first single "Herculean". "Everyone is on their way to Heaven, slowly." It's like his version of the simultaneously pre- and post-apocalyptic Children of Men-- contemporary malaise and moral decay recast ominously as science fiction.
And what's got Albarn down? Why, war of course. War, or reference to war, permeates or pops up in half the tracks-- "Nature Springs", "Behind the Sun", "Green Fields", "80s Life", "Kingdom of Doom"-- with war's horrors and aftermath alluded to in the rest. No specific war, per se, though one may infer Albarn's disagreement with the engagement in Iraq looms large. Only as presented here, the battle already sounds lost, the sound of a would-be revolutionary or freedom fighter giving up without a fight, weary with resignation as he digs yet another row of graves. "I don't want to live a war/ That's got no end in our time," goes a line in "80s Life", as hopeless a confession as one might hear.
No wonder the disc never really springs to life until "Three Changes", 10 songs in, though lyrically the song remains the same: "Today is dull and mild/ On a stroppy little island/ Of mixed up people" sounds like a mash-up of the weather report and editorial page.
Yet despite the relentless, beautiful gloom, as the concluding title track devolves into a noisy art-glam implosion it does feel like the end of a journey has been reached. But where have we been? And what did we learn along the way? That the world's in a bad place, of course. And Albarn's here to rub your face in it until that sinks in.
