Alex Petridis on The Good, the Band & The Queen:

"There are a lot of what you might call Britpop signifiers here - sounds immediately evocative of a time when football was held to be coming home - but they all appear twisted and warped, or in a kind of ghostly negative. "

and on the role of Fela Kuti's drummer Tony Allen in Albarn's supagroop:

"The prevailing sense is of gloom and foreboding replacing twinkly optimism, of things not being quite right. It's abetted by Allen's fabulous drumming, which the album could have done with more of. When he shows up, his slippery Afrobeat syncopations - the emphasis never landing where rock-accustomed ears might expect it to - lend a sense of uncertainty to the music. "

Having erm acquired the album and being actually in the middle of listening, I'd say much of it is kinda "Waterloo Sunset" Kinks in dub... Other bits are like The Clash if their entire oeuvre was grafted from "Lost In the Supermarket"/"The Call Up"...

Ach, it's pretty good, you know... Most ear-engaging track so far "Three Changes"...

It was so much easier when you could happily all-out abhor and ignore Damon Albarn, wasn't it! But then he went and reinvented himself as this vaguely honorable sort of figure.... a sort of Britpop equivalent to David Byrne maybe ... Honest Jon's archival nuggetry c.f. Luaka Bop.... and then Gorillaz (and hey I bet i secretly-liked them before you secretly-liked them, I thought that very first single was rather winning and kinda surprisingly rootical and dubby and packed an unusual degree of bass-weight for a pop single, plus there was a great perky 2step remix of it doing the rounds on the pirates).

Then again "Tender", Blur's "gospel" song, remains a stain that can never be washed away...