Blur Returns with “The Ballad of Darren”
Blur has returned with their first album in eight years. The Ballad of Darren came about after the band was offered to play at Wembley Stadium. After getting together to get their juices flowing again, they unexpectedly put together a full album’s worth of new material.
“It really is most unexpected,” bassist Alex James told Rolling Stone. “As soon as we all sat down and started playing together, it was pure magic. I think maybe singers and guitar players feel like they have to suffer, otherwise they haven’t turned up. But to me, Blur has always been an effortless, joyous, weightless kind of experience… All the years in the world fall away, and it’s just the four of us and the music in the room, and nothing’s changed since that first rehearsal 35 years ago.”
The album ranges from emotional ballads to heavier rockers that made the band famous in the ‘90s. Check out James laying down a heavy groove on “St. Charles Square”:
The Ballad of Darren is available now on CD, vinyl and as a digital download (iTunes and Amazon MP3).
The Ballad of Darren Track List:
- The Ballad
- St. Charles Square
- Barbaric
- Russian Strings
- The Everglades (For Leonard)
- The Narcissist
- Goodbye Albert
- Far Away Island
- Avalon
- The Heights
