I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE QUEEN-The Good, The Bad & The Queen (2007).

Once upon a time, Damon Albarn was just the singer from Blur. This was long before he became a multi-band, genre-hopping, composing man about town. Blur were a fun, poppy band who wrote fun poppy hits and sort of bubbled under in the U.S. until they hit it big with “Song 2” or the Whoo Hoo Song, if you will. I think that “Boys and Girls” or is it “Girls and Boys” from one of their earlier albums was a minor hit here. At least that’s how I first heard of them.

During the nonsensical Blur vs Oasis war that raged all across the world (or at least the UK Music Press), I liked both bands, but was clearly more in the Blur camp. And then one day Damon met up with Jamie Hewlitt who made the great comic Tank Girl, and they formed a great comic band Gorillaz. And boy was it big; even if you don’t count that they were cartoons, they were still huge! And then Damon became a worldly composer, writing a score for a Chinese opera (Monkey) and doing a wonderfully bizarre score for the wonderfully bizarre movie Ravenous. And just when you thought he would settle down, he came up with a new band: The Good, The Bad and The Queen.

Pretty much everything I’ve heard Damon write I’ve liked. Obviously, he has some clunkers, but no matter the genre or the style I have liked it (although I never did get Think Tank or whatever that last Blur album is called). I think his tunesmithing has improved with every new project. And that’s why this band puzzles me so much. I like every song on this record. And if not the entire song, there’s at least one part of each song that is so catchy!

Nevertheless, I don’t really like the album as a whole. I think it’s the style or genre or whatever it is, a sort of slow dancey style. I’m led to believe the term is dub, but then I haven’t really investigated that too much. As the band’s name instantly implied, it has something of an American Western vibe going on, and yet it still maintains something of a dance (albeit a very slow dance) feel.

As I was listening to it again today, I enjoyed each song quite a bit, but by the end of the record I didn’t want to hear it again. But I’m sure next time I put it on, I’ll like each song a little more. This seems to be the case with Albarn’s songs too, the more your hear them the more they stick with you. So, next time, I’ll have to put the disc on shuffle with something else and I’ll enjoy it all the way through!

[READ: Fall 2006] The End.

I enjoyed the entirety of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I thought the whole premise of the book, the writing style, and even the absurd plot twists were great. I loved that the books warned you not to read them, I loved that he defined harder words (sometimes with bizarre yet accurate definitions, and I loved that the characters were smart and thoughtful. The whole series is fantastic, and I look forward to my son reading it when he’s old enough. Much like with the Harry Potter series climax, it was fun to be around during the (much smaller) hype of the end of this series. I even got the free Gothic Archies sampler.

However, I was one of those people a little disappointed with The End. I suppose in many ways it could do nothing but disappoint some. What kind of resolution could you possibly put on this series? Nothing sweet and treacly that’s for sure. And, I didn’t necessarily want a tidy resolution, but for this crazy series, a few more pieces resolved would have been much appreciated. Nevertheless, I still think the series was great. Perhaps one would have to read them again to see if Mr Snicket actually knew what he was doing all along.