The Good, The Bad & The Queen

This Project Began in 2004 When Damon Albarn and Simon Tong Travelled to Nigeria to Record with Afrobeat Pioneer Tony Allen. Much Later, Albarn Gave the Tapes to Producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton and his Attitude Changed, Feeling Like He Would Just Write the Songs but Not Sing. Danger Mouse Helped Gel the Project and Albarn Just Wanted to Write Tales of West London. The Final Collaborator was Clash Bassist Paul Simonon, Whose Presence Changed the Whole Dynamic. The Result is a Record that Traces a Journey from the English Music Hall Tradition Over to West Africa for Afrobeat, Zigzagging Through the West Indies and Its Reggae and Dub, Back to England and London's Punk Scene, all the While Taking in a Strand of British Beat Music from the '50s Right Through to Britpop. A Very English Record, the Title Refers to a Saying in the Area that is Another Way of Saying "This is About Today, this is About the Present". A Heartfelt Tribute to London. .com ---- To open this oddball supergroup's debut, Paul Simonon hints at "s of Brixton," and when Tony Allen's flex rhythms come in, there's a shadow of Fela Kuti, too. Then Damon Albarn's slow grit of a voice enters--framed by Simon Tong's flecked guitar. And collectively, The Good, the Bad, & the Queen is quickly sui generis, adamantly different than anything you think you've heard. A band with this much power has at least two options: to cut loose raucously or to mute their overt power for a more covert, dub-inflected atmospheric potency. Smartly, Albarn and his crew opt for the half-light of elastic bass lines, the clouds between the parentheses of drums--the covert. It's not until "Kingdom of Doom," the erstwhile 'single' of the album, that motion expands beyond the languorous. And even then, Tony Allen largely sits out. You get the full flush of Simonon and Allen on "Three Changes" shuffling time even while holding the tempo to a dubbish gait. It's not Blur, the Clash, Fela, the Verve, or Gorillaz. It's more than just names on albums. --Andrew Bartlett

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