The last we heard from Blur, tracks recorded in 2012 and 2013 were ‘unlikely to ever be released’, so yesterday’s announcement that a new album entitled ‘The Magic Whip‘ will be ready in April came out of the blue to say the least.
And if it seemed like a last minute job to the rest of us, it was pretty much the same for the band who, according to frontman Damon Albarn, only got the finished product in their hands yesterday.
“We finished mixing last Friday and we literally mastered it yesterday,” Albarn told BBC Radio 1. “The reason that we’ve kept it secret is because we didn’t have a record until yesterday!”
“It’s got some real stinkers on it – there’s some bollocks on there,” Albarn said of the group’s last studio LP, 2003’s ‘Think Tank‘. That was an album recorded without Graham Coxon, who had left the band during its earliest stages, meaning ‘The Magic Whip’ marks Blur’s first album as a quartet since 1999. “There was an element of making amends with the guys but the fact is that I thought there was good music there and it’s a duty to deal with it,” Coxon added.
First single ‘Go Out‘ can be heard on Live4ever here.
With the exception of On The Way To The Club, what bollocks is he referring to? It’s a dynamite album – it bemuses me he said that.