A cancelled music festival caused Blur to set up shop in a Hong Kong studio for five days in 2013.
The new material they recorded there wouldn't have seen the light of day had Graham Coxon not knocked it into shape with producer Stephen Street before Damon Albarn returned to the city to complete lyrics that ponder the problems of modern life. The end result isn't a concept album but it's more complete than it has any right to be. There's a push and pull between Albarn and Coxon's influences - the former travelling world music's geography, the latter rock guitar's history - which brings a melancholic maturity and a sprinkling of eastern melodies to the choppy, snarly riffs that trampoline back from Britpop to the heyday of The Kinks and The Faces. Alex James supplies some of his funkiest bass lines ever and Dave Rowntree proves a creative underdog on the drums. Elements of their intervening projects can be heard but this couldn't be anything other than a Blur album, with pure brilliance here, there and everywhere.
Alan Morrison
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