The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Merrie Land (LP)

Merrie Land arrived on 16 November 2018 as a sad, uncanny postcard from a country staring at its own reflection. Damon Albarn, Paul Simonon, Simon Tong, and Tony Allen reconvened The Good, The Bad & The Queen more than a decade after their debut, and with Tony Visconti in the producer’s chair they delivered a record steeped in music hall shadows, seaside gray, and Brexit-era unease. It is both a travelogue and a lament, a set of songs that feel like sketches from train windows and empty promenades rather than slogans. That distance gives it bite.

You can hear the group’s chemistry within a few bars. Simonon’s bass steps with a dub-informed patience, Allen’s drums dance instead of stomp, and Tong colors the corners with guitar figures that suggest mist and drizzle rather than sunshine. Albarn leans into his most English impulses, which in this context means waltzes, parlour organs, and choirboy melodies that bend into melancholy. Visconti keeps the palette warm and grainy, so even when a chorus swells it feels like a brass band at the end of the pier, not a stadium moment.

The title track sets the tone. “Merrie Land” lilts like a strange nursery rhyme, the sort of tune you might hear drifting from a fairground speaker after closing time. Albarn’s voice sits right up front, conversational and a little worn, picking at nostalgia while refusing to let it off the hook. “Gun to the Head” takes the Punch and Judy spirit and turns it into a singalong with a wink and a grimace. The hooks come easy, but there is a curl of dread in the corners. This is where the band’s compact power is clearest. Allen’s rhythmic shuffle keeps everything buoyant, Simonon and Tong glide in parallel, and Albarn writes a chorus that sticks without leaning on bombast.

“Nineteen Seventeen” pulls history into the room with a march that never quite resolves into comfort. “The Truce of Twilight” tightens the screws, its verses whispering and its chorus landing like a stern aside. “Drifters & Trawlers” stands out as a sea picture, slow and patient, listening for what gets lost when communities get hollowed out. Then there is “Ribbons,” a bruised little beauty that gives Albarn one of his tenderest melodies in years. The closer, “The Poison Tree,” lets the mood soften and blur, the way a fog returns after the lights go out. It is a graceful exit.

Part of the fascination here is hearing four musicians with distinct histories meet in the present tense. Albarn has chased a lot of ideas across Blur and Gorillaz. Simonon carries The Clash’s sense of space and swing. Tong knows how to make a guitar glow without shouting. Allen, who died in 2020, plays with the effortless touch that made him a lodestar of Afrobeat. On Merrie Land he is the heartbeat, the pulse that turns these postcards into moving pictures. The album now doubles as a beautiful final chapter for this lineup.

The record drew strong notices from The Guardian and Pitchfork for good reason. It avoids easy catharsis and still invites you to hum along. It also sounds great on wax. The Good, The Bad & The Queen vinyl presses tend to capture the organ’s wheeze and the bass’s wood in a way streaming does not, and Merrie Land vinyl wears surface noise like sea spray on a window. If you spot a copy while crate-digging, it is the kind of album that rewards a full side at a time. I first played it end to end on a rainy Sunday and kept flipping it, waiting for the kettle to boil and letting the room grow quiet between songs. That is the pace it asks for.

If you collect The Good, The Bad & The Queen albums on vinyl, this one feels essential. It ties the group’s debut to a specific cultural moment and somehow keeps it humane rather than heavy-handed. You could buy The Good, The Bad & The Queen records online in a pinch, but I like the idea of stumbling on it in a Melbourne record store while browsing for weekend spins. Shops that focus on vinyl records Australia wide have been stocking it steadily since release, and if you care about sequencing and mood, this is a record that makes sense in that format.

What lingers is not just the politics or the period details, but the craft. The melodies fold around the words with care. The rhythm section breathes. The production stays close, like a friend telling you what they saw on their walk home. Merrie Land is a quiet triumph, the rare “state of the nation” album that feels like a conversation rather than a lecture, and it keeps giving each time the needle drops.