Tara takes a side in the great war. There’s also the Britpop war…
[Video][Website]
[3.20]
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Whoever told Damon Albarn that taking the lethargy of their worst songs that aren’t “Crazy Beat” and wedding that to the tunelessness of “Crazy Beat” was a good idea needs to go out, away, to hell, whatever.
[1]
Micha Cavaseno: You can use any sort of vehicle — Damon Albarn’s songwriting has become a bit shit, hasn’t it? He phones it in with less interest than a cousin who suddenly finds a phone pressed into their hands. The band is EFX-riddled to try to provide some feeling of otherness to their plodding steps, but none of it truly enhances the song. Nobody really wants to be here, so why should we?
[2]
Ian Mathers: Is this sonic return to the self-titled album what it took to get Coxon on board again? Albarn sounding exhausted is normally a strong suit for Blur, but not so much when he sounds like he’s tired of the song, or band, instead of being tired in the song. I actually love Blur to this day, but after 13 and Think Tank this feels like a step back.
[5]
Iain Mew: Graham Coxon’s scrunching sounds great, but it sounded great on “Under the Westway” as an element of a great song rather than as sole focus. This time everyone else seems to be coasting. Plus on a song so short of lyrical details to hook onto, “too many Western men” is a particularly awful one to include for four Western men in Hong Kong.
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: Damon Albarn sounds as bored singing these faux-deep lyrics as I am listening to this joyless trudge. Nothing going on in the background is particularly interesting, just wonky guitar noise that thinks being abrasive equals being interesting.
[2]
Brad Shoup: Just a sudsy headache of an arrangement, with grumpy low-end and ray-gun whine up high. It’s like drinking in a bar undergoing renovation. The lyric staggers between the personal and the political, but it’s possible that, as usual, Albarn just needs words to hoot at me. Something this debauched and cranky would be too on the nose for my local. Still, railing against stuff is the origin of most bar talk.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: The last time I was in the UK it was visiting my sister’s in-laws outside Manchester. We went down the street to their local, then back down the street after bad karaoke (maybe even to Blur) and an actual barfight. This song feels like if I’d stayed.
[1]
Josh Love: I know everyone’s excited about these guys putting out their first record since the early days of the Iraq war, but the praise this song is getting surprises me. I’m not sure even Harper Lee will get treated with such kid gloves when To Kill a Mockingbird II: Tokyo Drift drops later this year. Meanwhile, if “Go Out” was the lead single on the new Spoon album it’d be an embarrassment.
[4]
Tara Hillegeist: I don’t know why I keep expecting greatness from the bargain-bin knockoff version of Jarvis Cocker besides how deeply Parklife happens to have wedged itself into my spine above where all my sensibilities go to die, but I sure keep doing it, and I sure keep being baffled when my best intentions have the same result, which is uncertainty, disappointment and the vague belief that some fundamental underpinning of my reality has gone astray. And I can’t write the punchline that would close this out perfectly, because Katherine’s already done it. Truly, I do understand how Damon Albarn must feel about his own inadequacies at his original field of success in this moment — but that doesn’t make his efforts to try again since then any less of an unfortunate case of retrod ground. (I always saw it as blue and black, myself.)
[3]