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

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

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Previous to the release of The Ballad of Darren, Damon Albarn described Blur’s ninth album as “a document that type of delves into what it’s wish to be 55”. However it seems extra common than that, drenched within the horror of realising that point has handed 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 but to return. It appears to say that life is long till it’s not, that love is protected till it’s not, that the world is straightforward to exist in until it’s not: realisations that daybreak many times even in your younger years. Blur have all the time been able to balancing tender introspection with lairy pop tunes and The Ballad of Darren, swooning and seasoned, is considered one of their highest.

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 much of the report Albarn sings in his lower register like a washed-up lounge act, deep and simple and filled with beautiful regret. It makes lyrics that seem like adolescent poetry on the page sound deeply profound: “I just seemed 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 seems 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 finish, selves are reassessed, goodbyes are stated and the longer term is eyed warily.