Damon’s mournful ode to Brexit Britain

EARLIER this year,

Damon Albarn took to the stage at the Brit Awards to accept the British Group prize for another of his bands, Gorillaz. He has since admitted that he was “refreshed”. “I’ve got one thing to say and it’s about this country,” he slurred. “It’s a lovely place and it’s part of a beautiful world. Don’t let it become isolated.”

Consider the revival after 12 years of The Good, The Bad & The Queen — his collaboration with Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, Clash bassist Paul Simonon and The Verve’s Simon Tong — to be a far more articulate extension of that speech. It’s his Brexit album, in a nutshell.

Albarn has been putting an idea of Britishness to music since Blur’s second album, Modern Life is Rubbish, arrived as a reaction to American grunge in 1993. Merrie Land features a slightly queasy seaside organ in its sound palette, alongside medieval pipes, a quote from Chaucer and dubby basslines from Simonon that serve as a reminder that Britain is no monoculture. Unlike the ideas dump of Gorillaz, the mood here is consistently melancholy — a steady drizzle but not without beauty, as on the gorgeous ballad Lady Boston.

As with the recent Arctic Monkeys album, the loose, downbeat musical feel allows for greater focus on the lyrics, which mourn a country that is changing for the worse. “Are we green, are we pleasant?/We are not either of those, Father,” Albarn sings on the title track. “We are a shaking wreck where nothing grows/Lost in the sky-coloured oils of Merrie Land.”