There’s good news for fans of Damon Albarn and supergroups, with The Good, The Bad & The Queen’s long-awaited new album set to arrive next month.
Back in 2007, an officially-unnamed supergroup released their debut album, The Good, The Bad & The Queen. Soon, this group that consisted of Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz), Paul Simonon (The Clash), Simon Tong (The Verve), and Tony Allen (Fela Kuti), became unofficially known as their album’s title, and began to receiv critical acclaim along the way.
Since 2007 though, there’s been chatter of a new record, with Albarn noting new songs had been written, before confirming last year that the band had been in the studio, eschewing Danger Mouse on production duties in favour of the legendary Tony Visconti, who produced many of David Bowie’s albums.
“I’ve been recording the Good, The Bad & The Queen album,” Damon Albarn told Zane Lowe in an interview last year. “I’ve been working with Tony Visconti. He’s responsible for some of my favourite records, so that’s been really enlightening and inspirational.”
While Tony Visconti also confirmed that a new record was indeed on the way, he noted production had been held up while Damon Albarn was busy touring and recording a new album with Gorillaz.
Thankfully, back in July, Damon Albarn confirmed that The Good, The Bad & The Queen’s new record would be out by the end of the year.
“I’m on tour in Europe doing festivals, but I’m coming home in between them [to finish the record],” Albarn explained. “I’m working all weekend doing festivals and then come home Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday — that’s should be your weekend. But because I’ve stupidly started and want to make this record right, I don’t have any weekends.”
Now, as users on social media have pointed out, a notice in Uncut magazine has given us both the name and release date of the band’s second record.
Despite not being announced officially yet, the Thursday, October 18th issue of Uncut contained a mention of The Good, The Bad & The Queen’s Merrie Land being released on November 16th.
As one user on Reddit also discovered, the album’s cover features a still from the 1945 film Dead Of Night. Whether this means the record will have a bit of a creepy theme is unclear, but we won’t have that long to wait and see.
The Good, The Bad & The Queen – Merrie Land
16 November 2018 #thtbtq #goodbadqueen #damonalbarn #paulsimonon #simontong #tonyallen pic.twitter.com/nmmYOEjQ8c— Damon Albarn Unofficial (@DamonUnofficial) October 18, 2018
In related Damon Albarn news, the iconic musician also joked recently that Blur might decide to release some new music in the future if a ‘global petition’ demands it.
“Well, there’s already quite a lot of Blur out there,” he explained in a recent interview. “I suppose it would have to be because something compelled us to do it again, whether it’s a global petition or we fancy doing it again.”
Notably, this comment came just months after Damon Albarn addressed the topic of recording new Blur music though, stating that “Whenever Graham [Coxon] is around, I’m up to playing music with him.”
While we’ve got new stuff by The Good, The Bad & The Queen on the way, we might need to wait a little while for new music from Blur.
Check out The Good, The Bad & The Queen’s ‘Kingdom Of Doom’:
