release date: Nov. 16, 2018
format: cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,78]
producer: Tony Visconti, The Good, The Bad & The Queen
label: Studio 13 - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 2. "Merrie Land" - 3. "Gun to the Head" - 4. "Nineteen Seventeen" (live video) - 5. "The Great Fire" - 6. "Lady Boston" - 7. "Drifters & Trawlers" (live) - 9 . "Ribbons" - 11. "The Poison Tree"
2nd studio album by the Damon Albarn-led "super band" The Good, The Bad & The Queen released on the band's own newly-founded label is the follow-up album to the debut from 2007. It's quite remarkable how the band stays the same after eleven years and after a relatively inactive period of time. Of course Albarn is the driving force and it could easily be regarded as his solo-project if not all songs are credited the band. And band... Yes! Finally, earlier this year, the band officially announced to go by the name it has been commonly known as for the past decade. Even Albarn had to follow-suit on that - despite he may have been the mastermind of the [bad] idea to have a band with no name.
Thematically, the band continues to examine the past. "Merrie" is not a literal reference to the history of England as much as it's a confrontation of a nostalgic and biased image. The songs deal with inhuman life conditions, personal tragedies and general poverty as a state of late Middle Age England. This is underlined in the front cover with the puppet master holding his hand to the mouth of the puppet to prevent it from telling the ugly truth.
Stylistically, this also represents a huge mix of styles, but even so a much more coherent attempt to combine various styles without losing focus. There's a foundation that binds it all together that I didn't hear on the debut. It's still first and foremost art pop and neo-psychedelia with influences from various other styles. Tracks #6 and #7 makes me think of Joe Strummer - not just because of bassist Paul Simonon but there's a tone on several tracks that sound inspired by his wonderful style, which again is influenced by Jamaican music. This is a slower but more consistent release than the first album from the project, and it strikes me, how it's also the studio album with Damon Albarn in front to come out as the most successful non-Albarn-like album in many years. That is: it sounds more like a release by a band featuring Damon Albarn than a Albarn-lead project. Perhaps this is also by merit of producer Visconti - but the end result is a much better and coherent album than the 2007 debut. Does this man ever rest? It's only six months ago he released the sixth full-length album with Gorillaz - a completely different kind of a release.
Merrie Land has generally been granted positive reviews - some actually calling it one of the best of the year. I may not put it on top of my list but it's surely bettering the predecessor by a clear margin and the album is together with Now Now by Gorillaz a truly fine effort by Albarn.
Recommended.
[ 👍allmusic.com, Mojo, Drowned in Sound, Q Magazine 4 / 5, Uncut, The Guardian 3,5 / 5 stars ]
