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Back to: Archive · 2006 West London Calling From Uncut, cover date: November 2006. Words by Nigel Williamson. Photography by Pennie Smith.  "Our album's a natural successor to Parklife," says Damon Albarn, the frontman of The Good, The Bad & The Queen, as he sits on the floor of a converted west London church, on a swelteringly hot July afternoon. Above him hangs a huge and fantastical backdrop, painted by his new bass player, Paul Simonon. Rendered in smoky blues and greys, it depicts a Dickensian view of London updated for the 21st century, with mosques and minarets on the horizon behind the striking, foreground image of the monument to Victorian engineering that is the Goldborne Road bridge. It reinforces Albarn and Simonon's long-standing love affair with the capital, and west London in particular. "If The Clash was the sound of the Westway, this music is strongly rooted in the same area," agrees Simonon, former Clash bassist, kitted out on the hottest day of the year in brothel creepers and dark suit. "It's a very London record - it's like if Peter Ackroyd made an album. I tried to get that David Lean/Oliver Twist element into the painting, too, but to give it a contemporary relevance." From the nine or ten songs TGTB&TQ run through from their forthcoming album, it's clear that Albarn's musical vision has moved on radically from 1994's Parklife. TGTB&TQ is a worried, wistful, but ultimately hopeful record of 21st century folk songs. To make his mature vision manifest, Albarn has recruited the sort of supergroup that befits his reputation as an eclectic and tasteful "fixer". Consequently, his west London neighbour Simonon is joined by 66-year-old Afrobeat pioneer Tony Oladipo Allen on drums, and Simon Tong, the former Verve guitarist who has lately been part of Blur and Gorillaz' touring line-up. The producer, meanwhile, is Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton, half of Gnarls Barkley, who worked with Albarn on Demon Days, the second Gorillaz album. They're rehearsing for their live debut, on October 26 at London's Roundhouse. "The first time I met Damon was with Joe Strummer and Chrissie Hynde, who made us all have a group hug - which was an interesting way to be introduced to somebody," Simonon explains. "I get asked to do a lot of things musically and 99 times out of a hundred I say no. But when Damon asked me, there were two reasons why I said yes. The first was that I really liked his music. And the second was that I knew he'd refused to go to 10 Downing Street when Blair invited him. I thought, 'Yeah, that's my sort of person'."  (click image to enlarge) The idea for TGTB&TQ originated in Nigeria, in 2004, as an Albarn solo album, which he then invited Simonon and Burton to work on. "When Brian came into the picture, everything changed," Albarn says. "He said, 'Come on, let's make a really great English record.' I'd been holding back on writing an album like that ever since Parklife. I just felt so burned by everything that happened around that and I felt I wasn't mature enough to cope with the ridiculous stage I found myself on. It seriously wasn't worth it. "But I feel with people like Paul and Tony and Simon around, I can do it. It's such a lovely band to be in, with no ego whatsoever - although having said that, perhaps we should wait and see what happens when we're playing Glastonbury. If I'm up there going, 'ARE YOU READY?' then you can remind me of what I just said." "Initially I was going to play bass on the stuff he'd recorded in Nigeria," says Simonon, picking up the story. "But because of whatever happened between us - the magic, for want of a better word - we just started writing a whole bunch of new stuff. It's the first time I've made a record without any stress. I'm used to having two-hour arguments with Mick Jones over everything. But this was so smooth. Damon was also very good at delegating, which helped. He let Brian choose the songs, although we were all there and Brian was in charge of the mixing. It's a sign of strength to be able to do that." Even on a first listen, the songs on The Good, The Bad And The Queen clearly suggest a very different kind of Englishness to Parklife's fetishised vision of Albion. From the uneasy pastoral of "Bunting Song" to the Tilbury docks namechecked in "Northern Whale", there's a creeping disquiet, as though the malaise of The Specials' "Ghost Town" had spread across a whole country. "That's the whole point," Albarn agrees. "It's a very cosmopolitan record because that's the face of modern Britain. I'm not saying these songs necessarily have that same immediacy as Parklife and I'm not trying to compete with it. But I definitely feel it's a worthy successor." If the album is in any sense a sequel to Parklife why record the songs with a new band, not Blur? "For me to put out a solo record would've been a different thing and I decided there was no point in that because I'm a band kind of person," he reasons. "But I like putting different bands together and getting them working. It's an old-school thing. The great jazz people always played with different bands from one album to the next."  The Good, The Bad And The Queen is, according to Albarn, an album of stories, many of them inspired by the west London manor he shares with Simonon: "I wanted to create a strong narrative and a lot of the songs are letters to people and storied inspired by moments around where I live - the streets, bridges, canals, gasworks, late nights and early mornings," he says. "Herculean" doffs a hat to Ewan McColl's "Dirty Old Town" in its evocation of this landscape, while "Green Fields" commemorates a lost night on Goldhawk Road. "Paul was very much part of that. It turned out he lived two streets away from me. He's become a really good friend, which is nice because I like hanging around heroes - and he's a real hero. "I wanted to make an album that meant I'm able to present ideas rather than just say 'Here's a great pop song', which I've enjoyed doing with Gorillaz. That's been a fantastic journey which isn't over, because we're making a film. We've got Terry Gilliam involved. But as far as being in a big band and putting pop music out there, it's finished. We won't be doing that any more." Track-by-track - an exclusive peek at what you can expect from one of 2007's most anticipated albums... 1. History Song
"Sunday's lost in melancholy" sings Albarn over eerie organ and acoustic guitar on a track inspired by the origins of the expression "hangers on" - people who'd cling to the body of those condemned to hang to shorten their agony. 2. '80s Life Chopsticks piano, clipped arpeggios and doleful vocals on this cryptic, under-the-weather answer to "Unchained Melody". 3. Northern Whale "It was a love song, saying if you fall in the water I'll turn myself into a northern whale and come and get you," says Albarn of this plinky, lo-fi electronic ballad. "Then, would you Adam-and-Eve it, a northern whale came swimming up the Thames, so it evolved into a song about that." 4. Kingdom Of Doom "Drink all day 'cos the country's at war" wails Albarn amid cavernous early Floyd-style reverb on this self-proclaimed "love song for the collaboration". 5. Herculean A surreal, trip-hoppy homage to Ewan McColl's "Dirty Old Town", complete with canals, gasworks, ominous strings and premonitions of Armageddon. 6. Behind The Sun Bleak skies, baleful gales and spy-movie guitars clear to reveal a sunnily upbeat chorus on this touching, frail ballad. 7. The Bunting Song A twinkling pastoral lullaby which nevertheless suggests that "the days are a ticking bomb". 8. Nature Springs "Oceanographers are charting the rise of the seas" while submarines "search for a dream far away" on this pretty, shuffling ballad, full of birdsong and violins. 9. A Soldier's Tale Acoustic guitars, gliding strings, the calm of twilight and the overwhelming relief that there's "no drunken stuff spewing out of my mouth". 10. Three Changes A jazzy vamp of fairground organ and fidgety drums breaks down to a loping skank while Albarn complains that we are "living in magazines / We're looking for a reason why people stand all alone in the night". 11. Green Fields Originally donated to Marianne Faithfull, this beautiful Kinksy love song despairs of how "the green fields turned into stone" and concludes that "it's honesty that secures the bond in the heart". 12. The Good, The Bad & The Queen A surreal knees-up round a knackered old joanna that celebrates how the same sun cheers both Queen and crackheads - before building up to a psychotic guitar wig-out. |