The One-Listen Lowdown #3 | The Magic Whip by Blur

After so many years estranged in the wilderness, I was fretful about what the reformed Blur would sound like. Their 2012 interim single, “Under the Westway”, was a gentle, mellifluous piece that I felt boded well for a more substantial offering, but the unveiling of The Magic Whip’s cover gave me pause. Gone was the band/brand logo that had adorned most of their albums and singles. Gone were the spitfires, greyhounds, 4468 Mallards and flagons that I’d come to associate with their oh-so-English style. Hell, of Blur’s principal audience, only those who work in tattoo parlours are likely to be able to read the band’s name and the album’s title despite its repellent neon glow. All of this novelty, alas, evoked the sense of the troubled Think Tank over and above any of the group’s more acclaimed efforts.
My pause, however, would be brief. With my notepad in hand, fifty-two minutes flew past in a blur of nostalgia and enthusiasm. 
  For starters, you couldn’t possibly get a more Blurry song than “Lonesome Street” to open a record. Harking back to the band’s Britpop heyday, Damon Albarn floats a flurry of “Oh-oh”s and “Oh no”s on top of one of Graham Coxon’s baggiest riffs in a long time, the sounds of contemporary city life discernable beneath the indie clamour in a way that instantly evokes “Parklife”. A quick shift of gears, and the haunting “New World Towers” recalls a different era altogether, whilst insidiously laying the foundations of a new one. Its sound may be a perfect fit for the band’s eponymous 1997 album, or perhaps even their seminal 13, but its lyrics are thoroughly 2015 – “Logging your name and pray…”
The album’s onomatopoeic lead single is a little disappointing by contrast. Unlike the first two tracks, I’ve already heard it a few times and don’t much care for it. Though I admire Albarn’s gall in writing a mainstream pop song that’s ostensibly about wanking, unfortunately it sounds eerily like its subject matter. De facto title track “Ice Cream Man” is even creepier, its electronic bounce belying what seems to be the tale of a paedo’s outing (“All the lantern men marching down ’til dawn. Morning come, he fall over…”) There’s something infectious about it, nonetheless; its hook is insidious.
“Thought I Was a Spaceman” is bleak in a striking, harmonious way, calling to mind favourite tracks of mine like “Strange News from Another Star” and “On the Way to the Club”. The band then turn briefly into Radiohead, delivering thirty seconds or so of music that if you close your eyes, you’d swear you were listening to Thom Yorke and company. But as soon as Albarn starts to croon, “I love the aspects of another city, the representatives are al-ri-i-i-ght. In circulation the snake and the tiger, waking up clean shaven in industrial li-i-i-ght,” they’re indubitably Blur once more, and at the height of their powers. A first-listen standout, “I Broadcast” would have been my pick for lead single.
The Magic Whip only improves from there. “My Terracotta Heart” is the album’s buried treasure; a rare example of a heterosexual male lovesong - and one that finally draws a line under the Albarn / Coxon divide by combining what they each do best. Albarn sings of running out of heart and open road for his erstwhile brother as Coxon plays a gentle, haunting melody. It’s enough to bake any listener’s ceramic heart.
Inspired by a hostage situation in a chocolate shop, “There Are Too Many of Us” is a wonderfully paranoid track that fuses the restless spirit of Modern Life is Rubbish with 13’s grand symphonic scale. Whilst you won’t find any sensible solution to the world’s overcrowding problem hidden in them, Albarn’s lyrics are spiky and distrustful (“Flashing lights advocate it, on the big screens everywhere…”), and, thanks in no small part to farmer/bassist Alex James, the delicately textured music has an epic feel to it that continues to build upon the emotional weight of the previous track.
“Ghost Ship” feels like a bit of a filler by contrast, sounding like so many other non-descript Blur album tracks that it almost feels like a deliberate gag. That’s not to do it down too much though; more leisurely than Leisure, it’s actually a very pleasant, easy listen. It’s followed by a stirring dirge for North Korea’s capital city, Pyongyang. Abounding with beautiful lyrics (“And the pink light that bathes the great leaders is fading, by the time your sun is rising there, out here it’s turning blue. The silver rockets coming and the cherry trees, Pyongyang, I’m leaving…”) and deft musical flourishes, it’s another prime example of how Blur have seamlessly picked up exactly where they should have left off at the end of the last century.
“Lalalala lalalala lalalala lalala lalalala lalalalala…”
The Magic Whip’s penultimate track is probably destined to become its most popular, particularly at gigs. “Ong Ong” is a slow, lazy anthem that you can’t not sing along to. “I crawled out the harbour with recession behind, and now I’m feeling the love of you. So you better get a charge ’til I see you again, you’ll know just what to do…” It’s the perfect pop song for a sluggish, sizzling summer; another should-have-been single.
True to form, Blur leave us with a crushing low in the form of “Mirrorball”. A contemporary answer to “This is a Low” with all the devastating immensity of “Battery in Your Leg”, The Magic Whip’s final crack puts an emotive exclamation on what has to be considered a triumphant comeback.
“So before you log out, hold close to me…”
This summer, as ice creams drip, fireworks explode and MPs are whipped in, The Magic Whip is sure to be playing away in the background everywhere, spreading unease as Blur’s ’90s “modern life is rubbish” philosophy evolves into “modern life is… wrong.” And with the Tories back in charge of the UK, this time unhindered, it’s sure to get a whole lot wronger around here soon.
The Magic Whip is available to download from iTunes for £9.99 or Amazon’s MP3 store for £9.89. Ten pence more will get you the CD too, but if you go down that route you’ll have to either spend another £11.01 to qualify for free delivery or stump up however much Amazon charge for postage and packing these days.