Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
Everything has its time; it’s a fundamental law of the Universe that dare not be broken. Stars soon collapse under their own weight or burn up more fuel than they can ever hope to exist upon. There are endless rainy days that ruin a school summer holiday, soon dry out in time for that one perfect day in which the stolen kiss and furtive smile are the makings of a story that will regale all as soon as the dinner bell rings and empires, even musical ones, soon fade into the obscurity that Time allows them.
For Blur, it could be argued that that particular time has been and gone, for somewhere in the spiralling arm of space a thousand suns have ejected their last source of energy and that stolen kiss on beach that has barely had the chance to recover from a typhoon like drenching turning into ugly bitter divorce and the school ties cited in the proceedings. For Blur, The Magic Whip may sound in parts as if the old enchanting captivity was still in abundance but underneath it all, Time has not been kind.
Recapturing old memories may be a fascination for many, it’s hard not to see the attraction after all, who wouldn’t want to spend the day reminiscing about their first love, revisiting the first album that they bought from the confines of a darkened record shop, the inner sanctum of a thousand pressed vinyls or the song that exploded from whatever machine made it possible. Who would not want to hear the songs that Blur such a force to reckoned with in what was in all honesty a period of time that was devoid of a lot of great music? Time marches on, what was important 20 years ago is now relegated to the boot with the weekly shopping or the visit to the timber yard. Time marches to a different beat and whilst there are flashes of the appeal, notably in songs such as There Are Too Many Of Us, the driving sexual fission and frigidity trapped in Ice Cream Man and the substantial Ghost Ship, the moments are too far in between. They are the last relics of a sun exhausted by Time.
Time moves on and the flow of music, so orgasmic in its cutting delivery, so beautiful in its sarcasm and reflections on life, have been displaced, dispersed and finally beaten, time has seen off the bitterness and the brash and replaced it with the type of music that in many respects no longer appeals to those it once enthralled. The Magic Whip truly has become a blur for Blur.
The Magic Whip has seen the flavour disappear, it retains the shape and form but it has oozed and weathered, the texture cheapened by an introspection that has lost its way due to many side projects and the gel, that tremendous Blur feeling, now tastes as if it’s going off.
Disappointing and perhaps predictably so!
Ian D. Hall