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

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

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Prior to the release of The Ballad of Darren, Damon Albarn described Blur’s ninth album as “a report that kind of delves into what it’s wish to be 55”. However it seems extra universal than that, drenched in the horror of realising that time has passed and continues to cross. There’s mourning for the years you’ve already lived and the emotions you’ve long since felt, and nervousness for the years and feelings but to return. It appears to say that life is lengthy till it’s not, that love is protected until it’s not, that the world is straightforward to exist in until it’s not: realisations that dawn repeatedly even in your youthful 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 one in every of their 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 less particular, softer focus sort of anguish. For a lot of the document Albarn sings in his lower register like a washed-up lounge act, deep and simple and filled with beautiful remorse. It makes lyrics that seem like adolescent poetry on the page sound deeply profound: “I simply seemed out to the point / Where the phrases, they're 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 train in denial – it reads like devastation and feels 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 end, selves are reassessed, goodbyes are stated and the longer term is eyed warily.