Album Review: Blur - The Magic Whip

Blur didn’t have to make any new music.

Their recent tour history has proven they’d do remarkably well carrying on as a heritage act, which makes The Magic Whip – born out of five days stranded in Hong Kong – all the more remarkable.

So what can we make of Blur, 12 years on from Think Tank? This new record suggests their already expansive horizons are broader, a melting pot of abstract influences that see bouncing synths give way to heartfelt ballads, Chinese and British symbolism intertwined. Melancholia and joy paint Damon Albarn’s lyrics of personal detachment in an overwhelmingly well-connected world, on an album where three-minute pop jams (I Broadcast) keep company with epic rambling introspection (Thought I Was A Spaceman).

At the core of it you have two men, Albarn and Graham Coxon, practically brothers, who’ve spent more than a decade mostly apart. Their divergences have culminated in this sonic marriage, where Coxon’s penchant for a snarling guitar is a welcome bed for Albarn’s aphorisms. Where they can throw three chords down with a “la la la” refrain, have Dave Rowntree and Alex James on drums and bass respectively, and turn it into pop magic with a song like Ong Ong. Where Albarn’s despondent words in There Are Too Many Of Us are kept away from maudlin thanks to emphatic strings and a chugging bass line. All the while they make it look so deceptively simple, you wonder why they ever stopped.