Album Review: “The Magic Whip” by Blur
So “The Magic Whip” is weird. So what? If you were stranded in Hong Kong for five days, chances are that you’d do something weird too.
That’s how Blur’s first album in 12 years was accidentally conceived: mucking around in a recording studio during some unplanned downtime after the cancellation of a music festival in Tokyo. So much for planned parenthood.
This slightly creepy dance track to a psilocybin trip is perfect pre-summer listening for desert folk, like a new soundtrack for “Dazed and Confused.” As an experiment along the lines of the “Wizard of Oz” and “Dark Side of the Moon” juxtaposition, play “Dazed and Confused” with the sound turned down, crank up “The Magic Whip,” eat some moldy bread (or whatever you do for fun), and see what happens.
It’s not all mescaline and neon, though. The title itself reads as a political statement as well as a reference to both British ice cream and a Chinese firework. It’s a far cry from their bubblegummy ‘90s single, “She’s so High,” released during their Britpop fame war with Oasis. As that song is likely the only one most audiences really know, “The Magic Whip” comes as a surprisingly artsy enterprise.
Frontman Damon Albarn sounds not at all like the lovestruck whippersnapper of yore. While his voice is far from raspy or gravelly, it has certainly aged like Peter Gabriel’s, and it also lacks the studio polish of some other albums—in a very good way. In fact, appearing more like a journal entry than a billboard, this album dispenses with any pretense, seemingly unafraid to speak plainly and unconcerned about anything other than being its beautifully weird, socially critical self.
Blur kicks in the front door, fists full of confetti and cocaine, with “Lonesome Street,” something of an anti-tourist anthem, featuring lines like “This is a place to come to, or, well, it was.” Talking about taking “the 521 to East Grinstead,” it becomes apparent that he’s actually talking about home rather than China. But the message is really a blistering universal critique of McDonaldization: “What do you got? / Mass produced in somewhere hot.” It’s the perfect opener: a purposely detuned, “I’m strumming this guitar way too damn hard” post-‘90s sound is juxtaposed with silly synth patches as well as Albarn’s garish cockney accent.
While most of the lyrics to “New World Towers” are typical purple prose, references to planes flying overhead, “satellite showers” falling “like confetti on the cavalcade” seem to evoke the 9-11 terrorist attack, creating the general impression of a critique of imperialism. Next, Albarn’s Gorillaz days seem to resurface through “Go Out.” Punctuated by seedy, staccato grunts that serve as sit-ins for “oohs” and “ahhs,” it’s a strange and gritty tribute to the masturbatory outlook of modern man, a “greedy go-getter,” whose great existential crisis is apparently, “So what are we gonna do tonight?”
A satire of materialism, complete with mock-celeste accompaniment, “The Ice Cream Man” is anticipated by the dripping neon cone on the album cover and includes the title line you’ve been waiting for: “With a swish of his magic whip,” all the little consumers come running.
Perhaps as a nod to fellow Brit rocker David Bowie, “Thought I Was a Spaceman” features more of Albarn’s unimpassioned sprechstimme over an initially sparse, ambling electro beat (that nearly recalls The Smashing Pumpkins’ “The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete”) and amid gentle, spacious synth swells. The song later opens up, but it never achieves the warp-speed velocity of Bowie’s “Took a Trip on a Gemini Spacecraft.” Nor does it arch with the same beatific splendor as “Space Oddity,” but it’s still a worthy addition to the catalogue of interstellar-themed pop.
“I Broadcast” gets an “A” for energy but a “C-“ for intelligibility. Lines like “I love the aspects of another city” seem to clearly intimate some tourist experience, but exactly what “I broadcast / Goes on another day now / All for a cold sore / Something I know nothing” is supposed to mean is anyone’s guess. At least the overall theme of criticizing the status quo is evident, however garbled or cryptic it may be. And whoever said that rock music is supposed to make sense anyway?
On the other hand, a more scaled-down “My Terracotta Heart,” a tragic reminiscence, features some very melodic bass playing by bassist-turned-journalist-and-cheesemaker Alex James. Production-wise, it illustrates Blur’s tendency toward nonperfectionism, not that it’s ever needed; you won’t detect a hint of autotune in Albarn’s take-it-or-leave-it vocal dubs.
Beginning with a military feel, “There are Too Many of Us” is the kind of song that one might tend to write in a congested sardine box of a city like Hong Kong. Considering the context of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism—the historic religious components of aggregate Chinese philosophy—it’s interesting (and arguably ironic) when Alban sings, “There are too many of us / That’s plain to see / We all believe in praying / For our immortality.” Then again, perhaps he is singing from the East to the West rather than vice versa. At any rate, this observation rings loudly and harshly in the ears of a rapidly, mindlessly procreating culture. The only criticism of this song is a technical one: traditionally, one would use a dominant seventh chord where Albarn uses a major seventh, which results in the slight raising of an eyebrow every eight bars. Perhaps it is purposeful rule-breaking: after all, it is 2015. But when the great masters—like Beethoven or Berlioz—broke the rules, it was intentionally and to tremendous emotional effect.
The loungy, Jeri-curled “Ghost Ship,” a downtempo babymaker, is perhaps the sexiest song about a haunted structure or vessel ever recorded (although Mystery Skulls receive honorable mention for “Ghost”). You can almost hear angry spirits in the background, rubbing up against each other with lusty fervor, phantasmagoric undergarments strewn carelessly about a dilapidated and rotting poop deck.
“Pyongyang” is a seeming critique of North Korean domestic policy, with lines like “And the pink light that bathes the great leaders is fading,” and “Soon there will be no lights / Just a red glow of glass coffins / Watched by someone through the night.” As in Blonde Redhead’s “Top Ranking,” in which Kazu Makino sings, “They were young soldiers / They were old liars / But I heard the rumor that they will burn down your house,” Alban prophecies the consequences inflicted upon the people of a perpetual military state.
“Ong Ong” again conjures Bowie, this time landing somewhere between “Heroes” and “Golden Years”: a grungy anthem driven by acoustic guitar, it sits lazily on a honky-tonkish added-sixth chord with rum-drunk lethargy. Finally, “Mirrorball” seems to comment upon on both the world-shrinking effect of internet technology and the superficiality of relationships filtered through it. Albarn implores, “So before you log out / hold close to me.”
“The Magic Whip” is like a “how-to” guide for releasing a comeback album. While there are things that could have been done better, so much could have been done worse—and so often has with other comeback attempts. Anyone who ever liked anything that came from England—from Bowie to Oasis or even just the boys in Blur—will need cool treats like “The Magic Whip” to survive the impending southern Utah summer.
Articles related to “Album Review: ‘The Magic Whip’ by Blur”
Album Review: Words cannot describe “Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz”
Album Review: Blues Traveler’s ‘Blow Up the Moon’ is hilariously bad
Album Review: ‘The Great Unknown’ is ‘why did Rob Thomas record this crap?’
