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

Blur’s ninth album is a perfect mixture of middle-aged regret with swooning pop, a strong career summation

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Previous to the discharge of The Ballad of Darren, Damon Albarn described Blur’s ninth album as “a report that type of delves into what it’s wish to be 55”. Nevertheless it appears more common than that, drenched within the horror of realising that time has handed and continues to move. There’s mourning for the years you’ve already lived and the emotions you’ve long since felt, and nervousness for the years and emotions yet to return. It appears to say that life is long until it’s not, that love is protected till it’s not, that the world is straightforward to exist in till it’s not: realisations that daybreak repeatedly even in your younger 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 in every of their absolute best.

In a yr peppered with guitar-heavy albums that deal in very real mid-life grief – Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters – Blur’s is a much 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 easy and filled with beautiful remorse. It makes lyrics that appear to be adolescent poetry on the page sound deeply profound: “I simply appeared out to the point / Where the phrases, they are 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 exercise in denial – it reads like devastation and feels like a day on the seashore. Russian Strings is probably the most lovely track you’ll ever hear concerning the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Relationships finish, selves are reassessed, goodbyes are stated and the longer term is eyed warily.