The Good, the Bad & the Queen | ||
| Allmusic Biography : "The Good, the Bad & the Queen" refers to all the subjects that live under the London sun, so its a fitting if awkward moniker for a project -- not a band, as its leader has strenuously asserted -- designed by Blur frontman Damon Albarn as a way to return to writing about England, specifically London, the subject that brought him to fame in the mid-90s as one of the leading lights of Brit-pop. As he was completing work on Gorillazs second album, Demon Days, he began working on the Good, the Bad & the Queen, which actually had its roots in an older project. Shortly after the turn of the millennium, he teamed up with Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen after the drummer heard that Albarn name-checked him in the chorus of "Music Is My Radar," the bonus track added to the 2000 comp The Best of Blur. During 2004, Albarn headed to Nigeria with former Verve guitarist Simon Tong to record with Allen and other African musicians, but before the album was completed he turned his attention toward Demon Days. At the end of those sessions, Albarn gave the Nigerian tapes to Gorillaz producer Danger Mouse and the music radically evolved into the Good, the Bad & the Queen, with the idea that this, despite its African origins, would be music about London. Initially, Albarn toyed with the idea that this would be a solo project, but it turned into a full-fledged band -- a band that now needed a bassist. Albarn called up Clash bassist Paul Simonon, who had retired from music over a decade earlier to paint. Simonon was convinced to join the project, which now had an irresistible angle: the auteurs behind Parklife and London Calling, two quintessentially London LPs and two bona fide classics, were teaming up to make music about the town again. The resulting music may have had sounded little like either Parklife or London Calling -- it was a moody, languid affair, owing much to the Specials -- but it bore trademarks of all four musicians, from Albarns ongoing obsession with music hall and pop songwriting to Simonons loping basslines to Allens rhythms to Tongs sensitive tonal colorings. Before they released a record, the Good, the Bad & the Queen first started playing concerts, unveiling their complete album at a series of concerts, culminating with a gig at Camdens Roundhouse just before their debut single, "Herculean," hit the shops. This spooky single appropriately surfaced the day before Halloween in 2006, followed by "Kingdom of Doom" in January 2007. The full-length The Good, the Bad & the Queen appeared that month as well on both sides of the Atlantic, greeted with uniformly positive (sometimes enthusiastic) reviews. Shortly after the albums release, Albarn began to insist in press interviews that this band had no official name, a bit of an odd move considering the numerous articles, written in 2006 as the group was recording that called the outfit the Good, the Bad & the Queen. The quartet went on tour in the spring of 2007, playing events in New York and the Coachella festival. The Good, The Bad & The Queen went quiet after 2007, yet the members stayed in contact. Simonon and Tong both appeared on Plastic Beach, the 2010 album by Gorillaz, while Albarn and Allen teamed up with Flea for the 2012 album Rocket Juice & the Moon. TGTBTQ reunited to play an anniversary concert for Greenpeace at Londons Coronet Theatre in November 2011, while Allen and Tong played on Albarns Dr. Dee album in 2012. It wasnt until 2014 that Albarn announced the possibility of a new album from the Good, The Bad & The Queen, but the record he murmured about that year never appeared. The group didnt return to action until November of 2018, when they released Merrie Land. Produced by Tony Visconti, Merrie Land chronicled Britain during the era of Brexit. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 3 Title: The Good, the Bad & the Queen Released: 2007-01-22 Tracks: 12 Duration: 42:58 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 History Song (03:05) 2 80’s Life (03:28) 3 Northern Whale (03:54) 4 Kingdom of Doom (02:42) 5 Herculean (03:59) 6 Behind the Sun (02:38) 7 The Bunting Song (03:47) 8 Nature Springs (03:10) 9 A Soldier’s Tale (02:30) 10 Three Changes (04:15) 11 Green Fields (02:26) 12 The Good, the Bad & the Queen (07:00) |
| The Good, the Bad & the Queen : Allmusic album Review : Around the turn of the millennium -- just after the release of Blurs moody sixth album, 13 -- Damon Albarn began to quietly back away from the very concept of fronting a rock band, turning his attention to a series of collaborative projects that soon overshadowed his main gig. First there was the electro-bubblegum group Gorillaz, which afforded Albarn the opportunity to masquerade behind a cartoon, a move that allowed him to let his music speak louder than his fame, a method that he found irresistible as he began to do several projects similar to this, including a voyage to Africa documented on Mali Music, along with other less-publicized forays into soundtracks. In this context, the post-Graham Coxon Blur albumThink Tank seemed less like a band effort than another conceptual project directed by Albarn instead of the work of a band, which is what all these new-millennium projects were at their core, including the Good, the Bad & the Queen, a quartet comprised of himself, Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong, and Tony Allen, Fela Kutis drummer, who was name-checked in Blurs "Music Is My Radar," and whose eponymous 2007 album is produced by Danger Mouse, who previously collaborated with Albarn on Gorillazs second album, 2005s Demon Days. A flurry of pre-release activity compared The Good, the Bad & the Queen to Blurs 1994 masterpiece Parklife, as it represents a conscious return to Albarn writing songs specifically about London at a particular point in time. Thematically accurate though this may be, it is also misleading, suggesting that Albarn is also returning to the bright, colorful, clever guitar pop that made his reputation -- something akin to Coxons reclamation of that sound on his excellent recent solo albums, Happiness in Magazines and Love Travels at Illegal Speeds. That couldnt be farther from the truth, as The Good, the Bad & the Queen is deliberately drained of color and mired in moodiness. If Parklife exuberantly captured the giddiness of the mid-90s, as fashions and politics changed, ushering in New Labor, Britpop, and new lad culture, The Good, the Bad & the Queen captures how all that optimism has calcified into weary cynicism, as the endless opportunities of the 90s have given way to a warring world that seems to lack any center or certainty. So, in that sense, it is a cousin to Parklife in how it captures a national mood, but in sheer sonic terms, the closet antecedent of Albarns is Demon Days, which traced out an apocalyptic vision despite its insistent pop hooks. Which isnt to say that The Good, the Bad & the Queen is a Gorillaz album in disguise, nor should Simonons presence suggest that this is the second coming of London Calling; if anything, GBQ suggest the Specials at their most haunted, which is hardly uncharacteristic of Damon, who has always used "Ghost Town" as a blueprint whenever hes wanted to get spooky. Despite these echoes of the past -- and there are other echoes, too, arriving in Simonons thundering dub bass, Tongs spectral guitars, Allens nimble rhythms, and Albarns vaudevillian piano and carnivalesque organ -- The Good, the Bad & the Queen is most certainly its own distinctive thing, the product of five iconoclastic musicians working a theme endlessly, relentlessly, and inventively, producing music that plays more like a movie than an album. Early on, as "History Song" eases into view on a circular acoustic guitar phrase, it establishes an alluring, dank, and artfully dour mood that the band continually expands and explores without ever letting the gloom lift. But for as dark as this is, GBQ never sounds despairing -- its wearily resigned, as Albarn and his bandmates prefer to luxuriously wallow in the murk instead of finding a way out of it. Theres a comfort in its melancholy, particularly in how the album glides from one elegantly doleful song to another, but at times the album almost sounds too samey, with no individual song emerging from the whole. Part of the reason for this is Danger Mouses production: its as subtle and clever as ever, but built largely in the post-production -- to the extent that hell mix out Allen for large stretches of the album just for the aural effect. Hes orchestrated a unified, dramatic album -- its a tapestry of impeccable, sorrowful, yet sultry soundscapes -- but given the pedigree of this band, its hard not to wish that the album offered more of the quartet just playing, gussied up with no effect. Nevertheless, as an album The Good, the Bad & the Queen is singularly effective, bringing the roiling melancholy undercurrent of Demon Days to the surface and creating a murky, mud-streaked impressionistic rock noir thats sinisterly seductive in its gloom. | ||
 | Album: 2 of 3 Title: iTunes Live from SoHo Released: 2007-04-02 Tracks: 5 Duration: 21:02 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Intro / History Song (04:43) 2 Herculean (04:11) 3 Behind the Sun (03:10) 4 Nature Springs (04:20) 5 Three Changes (04:38) |
 | Album: 3 of 3 Title: Merrie Land Released: 2018-11-16 Tracks: 11 Duration: 37:22 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Introduction (00:13) 2 Merrie Land (04:46) 3 Gun to the Head (04:19) 4 Nineteen Seventeen (03:43) 5 The Great Fire (03:56) 6 Lady Boston (04:19) 7 Drifters & Trawlers (02:34) 8 The Truce of Twilight (04:22) 9 Ribbons (02:52) 10 The Last Man to Leave (02:38) 11 The Poison Tree (03:40) |