The Good, The Bad And The Queen
The Good, The Bad And The Queen (Parlophone)
***

Noel Gallagher would provide better company for a pint or 10 but, otherwise, there's no real doubt that Damon Albarn has been the long-term victor of the Britpop Wars.
Blur won the immediate skirmish when Country House beat Oasis's Roll With It to number one in the singles chart in August 1995 but Blur's subsequent album, The Great Escape, was pummelled commercially by Oasis's (What's The Story) Morning Glory and Blur rarely challenged Oasis thereafter.
Yet while Noel and Liam forlornly try to reignite the spark that was so obviously well-and-truly doused by the avalanche of cocaine that swept through their lives on the back of the success of What's The Story, Damon forges on. Noel has boasted to me that he would never play or attempt to play what he derides as "space jazz", which was, as one can see with the benefit of hindsight and some lamentable recent Oasis albums, Noel's shorthand for "anything different or experimental".
Noel always saw creative restlessness as pretension. "Stick with what you know, don't be above yourself" has been a mantra of the British working class for generations and it's what separates
Noel from middle-class Damon, who, while lacking Noel's common touch (he's a prickly so-and-so) has never balked at trying something different or at being perceived as an artist. Damon sees being adventurous as a badge of honour for a musician.
Indeed, in a twist that will have had Noel biting chunks out of Liam's monobrow, it's clear that Damon's approach has not only earned him critical kudos but big money too. The two Gorillaz albums have so far sold in excess of 11 million copies. That said, The Good, The
Bad And The Queen is not Gorillaz MK2. Its ancestry can be traced back thematically to "difficult" Blur albums such as 13, and musically all the way back to The Specials and The Clash.
Hear that plump bassline on album opener History Song? That not only sounds like Paul Simonon from The Clash, it actually is Paul Simonon. Indeed, History Song, with its dense, melancholic feel and chattering instrumentation, is hugely reminiscent of Sandinista! and Combat Rock-era Clash.
The Good, The Bad And The Queen also features Simon Tong (ex-Verve) on guitars, Tony Allen (inventor of afrobeat) on drums and Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley) as producer, but Damon dominates. His distinctive voice is multi-tracked as harmonies throughout and his lyrical agenda is modern Britain. Yet, as with fellow-traveller Thom Yorke, Damon is rarely as pithy or insightful as he'd like to think; linking binge drinking to the Iraq War, as he does in Kingdom Of Doom, is something of a stretch.
But it highlights Albarn's essential strength - writing a big fat hook. And while the melodies on The Good, The Bad And The Queen are often buried deep in atmosphere, they are there. They just take a little longer to find. Paul Connolly

THIS WEEK'S OTHER RELEASES

4 Hero
Play With The Changes (Raw Canvas Records)
****

After six years away, 4 Hero return with an album oozing class. Original members Dego and Marc's smart move was to ditch their trademark fusion of breakbeats and jazz in favour of slinky synths, fluttering beats, orchestral steals and strings. Futuristic black soul still describes their music, but now it's for grown-ups, not clubbers. All but a trio of the 14 songs feature guest vocalists, from poet and long-time cohort Ursula Rucker to Jody Watley and Bugz In The Attic's Kaidi Tatham. Look Inside, featuring a fabulous female called Face, quietly harks back to mid-Nineties 4 Hero, but ups the feel-good factor. A delicious album that deserves attention. Lisa Verrico

Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer (PolyVinyl)
****

Generally speaking, a disastrous relocation to Norway followed by your wife leaving you and a foray into borderline alcoholism is a bad thing.
Not so for Kevin Barnes, aka Of Montreal. Knocking out skewed, Beatlesy pop records at the rate of almost one a year for the past decade, Of Montreal was getting very predictable. Indeed, for the first five tracks on Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? drift past in almost too perfect fashion. Then comes the 12-minute The Past Is A Grotesque Animal. It is jaw-dropping. Ushered in by a swirl of synths, it locks into an unsettled groove of sci-fi electronics. This is the signal for a weirder, darker, much improved second half, plus, as it turns out he got back with his wife, so everybody's happy. Andrzej Lukowski

JoJo
The High Road (Mercury)
****

Much has changed in the two years since Joanna Levesque became the youngest solo artist to top the Billboard charts.
The then 13-year-old JoJo sounded like a second-rate Aaliyah and looked like a mini-Britney. Now she has matured into a serious pop star with a voice pitched somewhere between Beyoncé and Kelly Clarkson. Sure, The High Road relies on a list of writers and producers as long as your arm, but its mix of sassy and classy works tremendously well. Opener The Way You Do Me is a high-energy affairand Scott Scorch delivers a slinky winner with This Time and the acoustic guitar-backed Too Little Too Late is huge in the US and should do well here. Lisa Verrico

Field Music
Tones Of Town (Memphis Industries)
***

Not a million miles away from an even artier version of fellow North-Eastern art-rockers Maximo Park and The Futureheads, Field Music's self-titled debut album saw them establish themselves as darlings of the leftfield indie press. That's not something Tones Of Town is likely to change.
Chucking in every sound effect bar the kitchen sink, these super-brainy songs are so exotically structured that it should be entered for the Nobel Prize for physics. Yet under all the layers of questing sonic invention it's hard to find much to love about this record.
That's not to say it's sterile or cold: songs like In Context fizz and crackle like a sparkler. Not one great tune, but lots of little ones. Andrzej Lukowski