BY BERLINDA RECACHO
"Swear on the life of the lead singer of Blur?!" Rory Gilmore demands of her best friend Lane Kim in the season one finale of Gilmore Girls. Both girls take the weight of this challenge seriously and I might have been more heartened had Rory (and most of America) known that the name of said singer was Damon Albarn. But it was May 2001, only two months after the self-titled first record of Albarn's new project Gorillaz and two years ahead of Think Tank, Blur's last effort before embarking on an unexpected almost decade-long hiatus. A fictional teenager might be forgiven for not being more specific, and while the members of Blur are real people, it sometimes seems like they are only a little more in control of life than scriptwriters showing off their musical knowledge. Since Blur's 1991 debut Leisure, Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, and drummer Dave Rowntree have achieved worldwide success, defined their ethos and extended their musical range and inspirations, amid relationships and families, holding political office, and writing books, among other endeavors. [Kenixfan: It's worth adding that Graham Coxon offered up, with site fave Rose Elinor Dougall, an album earlier this year as The Waeve, and drummer Dave Rowntree served up a fairly engaging solo album too.] It must be a guy thing -- to live like you can have it all -- but maybe even that is a myth.
Blur have persevered and survived, but not unscathed. There have been breakups, addictions, stints in rehab, recoveries, and estrangements. As Albarn himself observed in a recent Apple Music interview, he doesn't know many people his age (55) who haven't had their lives touched by sadness. It calls to mind that foreboding lyric in "End of a Century" (from 1994's Parklife): "Your mind gets dirty/as you get closer to thirty." These lads are now closer to 60. Time passes at a different rate in your head than it does out in the world. You may feel no different than yesterday, then look in the mirror and not recognize who's staring back. The Ballad of Darren captures that inevitable friction: youth vs. middle age, who you used to be vs. who you are now, what happened in-between vs. how you move forward.
The version of Blur living "life in the 90s" would not have kicked off an album with gentle threats, ruefully promising that when "The ballad comes for you/It comes like me." Since history can't be changed and the future resists prediction, the reckoning lies in between, in the present. Albarn confides, "I just looked out to the point/where the words they are hitting me in a full-on assault." More suited to a grand entrance are the affable, hummable "Barbaric" or better yet, the powerful, stadium-ready riff Coxon uses to open "St. Charles Square" as Albarn delivers a half-hearted mea culpa "I fucked up/I'm not the first to do it." But even these songs feel haunted. "'Cause there's something down here/and it's living underneath the floorboards/It's grabbed me round the neck with its long and slender claws" Albarn sings, and then screams in reaction. But the scariest elements are less metaphorical and more literal. "Square" hangs on the (self-referential?) hook that "every generation has its gilded poseurs." "Barbaric" features a yawp of unmoored regret cloaked in a deceptively cheery tune: "We have lost the feeling we thought we'd never lose/Now where are we going?" "Avalon" is not a cover of the song of the same title by Roxy Music, but it expresses a similar disillusionment with chasing an ideal that can never be reached. As breakup songs tend to be loud and full of fervor in your 20s, and more reserved chronicles of heartbreak later in life, "The Heights" forms the bookend to "Tender" (from 1998's 13). The Ballad of Darren has a pervading theme of loss -- of people, time, routines, self-identity, direction -- and even a loss of stability on the larger scale of geopolitics ("Russian Strings") and climate ("The Everglades") -- as uncertainty and chaos seep in to fill the gaps. The lovely, plaintive waltz of "Faraway Island" yearns to return to an earlier place and time, aware that the impossibility of this dream is what makes it so attractive. "The Narcissist" reads like an irresistible list of indiscretions with a hopeful line thrown out for rescue: "I'm shine a light in your eyes/you'll probably shine it back on me/but I won't fall this time/With Godspeed I'll heed the signs."
The standard version of Darren ends at 10 tracks; but the additional trio of songs available on the deluxe version deserve just as much attention. "The Rabbi" is catchy and wise, flashing back to Blur's origins, underlying images of faith and skepticism with the jangly twang of guitar, "careening 'round blind bends at high speed", lamenting "the loneliness of the long-distance driver." Like a coda to the album's opening song, "The Swan" glides through insecurities and best intentions, asking, "Do you miss me? Though I'm often gone/Know that I will always be here/For you even/When you've gone/from this world." At this point Albarn has lulled listeners halfway through the exit when Coxon pulls them back with lead vocals to the hypnotically alluring "Sticks and Stones". Anchored by an insistent staccato bassline, Coxon delivers his closing argument with enigmatic warnings: "Floating in the darkness/Talking to the ghosts/The ones who want you dead/are the ones you love the most." The instruments rise and swirl, pace, wrestle and sink into a blip as the song collapses in on itself. A fitting end.
As the saying goes, time and tide wait for no one. We fans age along with our idols; we walk at the same pace, buoying each other up. This is what makes The Ballad of Darren so poignant. Blur are not looking to reinvent themselves, but are instead focused on documenting change as it happens. This honest assessment is what keeps them relevant and resonant, whether or not the next generation is ever musically cool (or ironic) enough to swear by them.
The Ballad of Darren by Blur is out now.
[Photo Uncredited 2023 photo from band's official Facebook page. No rights implied or assumed.]