The Magic Whip

It’s Blur at the top of their game, as they had been, as they should have always been, as they deserve to be.

It's actually quite good; not exactly a return to the band's mid-'90s Brit-pop peak, but a welcome progression beyond. Blur delivers a stranger, more atmospheric but still melodic brand of electro-folk salted with rock guitar and orchestral sweep.

It can proudly stand alongside anything else the band has done. [No. 120, p.52]

The Magic Whip continues along the weird and winding path first trod by Blur’s two previous, and most complex, LPs. More often than not, the album meanders, usually for the better.

Britpop’s giants are back, and they sound surprisingly the way we had hoped they would: melodic, contemplative and content as a single unit.

hat mix of worldly and familiar references, moods and textures ensures that The Magic Whip buzzes with urgency, even at its most serene and existential (or when Albarn rehashes his banal reservations about modern times).

The results are a pleasant surprise.

For longtime fans of Blur’s alluring blend of pop smarts, rock edge, and electronic flourishes, The Magic Whip is close to a slam dunk, as the quartet conjures the vibe of its ’90s glory days without veering into rehash territory, making it a good ambassador for potential new listeners as well.

Globetrotting frontman Damon Albarn then returned to Hong Kong to write lyrics, hoping to recapture the spirit. He has largely succeeded, as The Magic Whip is a fascinating snapshot of a group coming to personal and professional crossroads in a strange city where modern living leads to bewilderment and alienation.

This is, simply and purely, a great, if blissfully weird, Blur record.

Like Everyday Robots, there's an existential loneliness thrumming throughout The Magic Whip, but there's also camaraderie, a sense that companionship can pull you through, and that's especially true of Albarn and Coxon, who prove once again to be the other's ideal collaborator, refining, expanding, and sharpening their ideas, turning a potential throwaway to something quietly resonant.

Blur have returned with inspiration to spare.

Magic Whip finds enough majesty and intrigue in the band’s more meditative days to remain worthy company to any of the band’s classic LPs.

The reconstituted Blur confines its wilder moments to the margins, using them to add creativity to the arrangements, or hint at the askew worldview expressed in the lyrics. The core of the songs recall the melodic sharpness, and rhythmic force, of the 1990s.

At its best, The Magic Whip has all the charm of Blur at their most mysterious, and little of the laddish triumphalism of Blur in headline slot mode.

It is an almost endlessly intriguing record, full of mad ideas, strange microhooks and an air of rich elegy that just works.

Musically, they don’t sound like a band taking a final curtain call. They sound like a band filled with ideas and potential new directions, who have plenty left to do together, if they choose.

For a collection with an eye on the setting sun and the slow decline, it's a fine late flowering. [May 2015, p.91]

The Magic Whip succeeds splendidly in coming across as a comeback album that hasn’t been overthought, flashing a nonchalant dare to any prospective Oasis reunion project.

While not quite the gang of four of old, they are all pulling in the same direction and, even for the most casual Blur fan, that is a glorious thing.

This is a reunited band making music to rival their very best. There’s airmiles aplenty in these Essex Dogs yet.

Shorn of expectation and match fit in the middle of a long tour, four friends found each other again.

In its own flawed, modest, off-kilter way, this might turn out to be one of the most accomplished records of the year. [May 2015, p.98]

At its best, The Magic Whip thrums with ideas and possibilities. [May 2015, p.65]

Their magic remains as strong as ever.

Heart, ultimately, is the key to a project which links personal, small-scale disturbances of loneliness and homesickness with broader concerns of population density and ecological sustainability.

Even with its faults, The Magic Whip is remarkably cohesive; not a single track is superfluous, flippant, or jarring.

In the moments when The Magic Whip is most interested in sounding like a Blur album, it is perhaps too interested.

All The Magic Whip tries to be is nothing more than the band in their purest form, deprived of all commercial considerations so that their eccentricities are all that remains.

The Magic Whip isn't a triumphant return of a Britpop champion; instead, it's a mature, measured document from a band that's never rested on its laurels.

As with 13 and Think Tank, noodling ensues ("Thought I Was a Spaceman") and melodies never dry fully ("My Terracotta Heart"), but that works both ways when "There Are Too Many of Us" marches into deep-cut territory through space and strings.

It’s a testament to the band’s intangible chemistry that The Magic Whip doesn’t feel like an Albarn (or a Coxon) solo effort; the album sounds like a Blur record. And despite its flaws, this new music is insidiously catchy, with plenty of unorthodox hooks that linger after the record ends.

There is heart here, despite the often airless production, deliberately claustrophobic, like the city that inspired it. Repeated listens make the gems shine brighter.... Yet other moments weather less well, sounding exactly like what they are: raw material worked up in just five days.