The 50 best albums of 2023, No 8 – Blur: The Ballad of Darren

Blur’s ninth album is an ideal combination of middle-aged regret with swooning pop, a strong profession summation

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Prior to the discharge of The Ballad of Darren, Damon Albarn described Blur’s ninth album as “a document that kind of delves into what it’s wish to be 55”. Nevertheless it seems extra common than that, drenched within the horror of realising that point has passed and continues to cross. There’s mourning for the years you’ve already lived and the emotions you’ve lengthy since felt, and nervousness for the years and emotions yet to return. It appears to say that life is lengthy until it’s not, that love is protected until it’s not, that the world is straightforward to exist in until it’s not: realisations that daybreak many times even in your youthful years. Blur have all the time been capable of balancing tender introspection with lairy pop tunes and The Ballad of Darren, swooning and seasoned, is one among their best possible.

In a yr peppered with guitar-heavy albums that deal in very actual mid-life grief – Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters – Blur’s is a less specific, softer focus type of anguish. For a lot of the document Albarn sings in his decrease register like a washed-up lounge act, deep and simple and filled with beautiful remorse. It makes lyrics that seem like adolescent poetry on the web page sound deeply profound: “I just appeared out to the purpose / Where the words, they're hitting me / In a full-on assault,” he sings on opener The Ballad, a mirror ball-dappled, end-of-night lament. The peppy Barbaric is an train in denial – it reads like devastation and feels like a day on the seashore. Russian Strings is probably the most lovely music you’ll ever hear concerning the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Relationships end, selves are reassessed, goodbyes are stated and the longer term is eyed warily.