ARTIST: The Good, The Bad & The Queen
TITLE: The Good, The Bad & The Queen
LABEL: Vrigin/Parlophone/Honest Jons Records
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 195kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 42m total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-01-23
RIP DATE: 2007-01-16
Track List
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1. History Song 3:06
2. 80's Life 3:28
3. Northern Whale 3:54
4. Kingdom Of Doom 2:42
5. Herculean 3:59
6. Behind The Sun 2:38
7. The Bunting Song 3:47
8. Nature Springs 3:10
9. A Soldier's Tale 2:30
10. Three Changes 4:15
11. Green Fields 2:26
12. The Good, The Bad & The Queen 7:00
Release Notes:
To open this oddball supergroup's debut, Paul Simonon hints at "Guns 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.
The Good, The Bad and The Queen began life in the Aphrodisia Studios in Nigeria
in 2004 and 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. Produced by Brian
æDanger MouseÆ Burton.