New Music (4.29.2015)

Blur
Magic Whip

This week's entry will be longer than usual, taking on a bit more editorializing than simply review, but that will be later.

Blur's Magic Whip is a fantastic addition to an already stacked repertoire by one of "Britpop's" most successful bands. Their twelve-year absence was barely noticed, but is made that much more prominent by this offering of reemergence.

Started as a distraction while the group was stranded in Hong Kong, Magic Whip is the best possible combination of all the individual members' solo work: the poppy dance beats of Albarn's Gorillaz work and the prog-rock wooziness of Coxon's The Kiss of the Morning all find space here. The revitalized sound is given the same glossy treatment as Blur's 1997 self-titled album, and is just as exciting.

The work showcased here by an act that has long since proved its mastery of the craft is almost astonishing--to be this good after so long is a rare quality indeed--and the reflective nature of its themes is shockingly refreshing, since most bands of Blur's age drone on and on about the drudgery of fame.

Here, Albarn and company come across the same perils of the modern age as seen in EMA's The Future's Void, St. Vincent's St. Vincent, and even Arcade Fire's Reflektor: the anonymity of an always-online society, combined with easy access to personal technology, leaves us all alone together.

---

Sleep Well, Fair Baltimore

     This past Monday was unlike anything I had personally experienced. That said, I cannot comment on black youth relations with police, because I am not a black youth, and I am not a police officer. The tensions between these two groups in my city are deep-seated and have a long, discouraging history. What began Monday afternoon was an event that had been burning under the skin of Baltimore for well over the 47 years since the 1968 riots sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and when it finally came to the forefront, it did so in a violent boiling over unlike anyone of my generation had seen in the area.

I don't need to recount the actual events of the day, they have been covered ad nauseam by every armchair journalist-that-thinks-themselves-a-philosopher and fear-monger (I'm looking at you, CNN) this side of the International Date Line. For almost 24 straight hours, the national media bombarded us with images like the one above: black teens hurling rocks at police, looting stores, burning anything remotely combustible. But yesterday, only the locals saw pictures like this:

or this:

images of people being kind to one another, images of people helping one another. That is the Baltimore I know.

A lot of what happened will be the onus for placing blame--on the police, on the city and state government, on the people that participated. But such a disturbing incident in my hometown brings me to ask a question: what do we mean by "no justice, no peace?" To me, the two are not as mutual exclusive as the protest chant and twitter hashtag suggest. To the people using the phrase: is what happened on Monday what we mean by "no peace?" I assure you it is not; I assure you "no peace" means civil disobedience, very much unlike that which happened two days ago.

What I can say, most assuredly, is that when violence like Monday's occurs, the justice system freezes. Do you think the police are diligently working on the case--the most important case--while that's going on? Whose "fault" the riots are has nothing to do with it, nor is it particularly helpful to find out. May I suggest instead, "no peace, no justice."

Everyone who loses somebody wants revenge, but revenge is a lazy form of grief. The only way to end grief is to save a life, not take one. If you enact vengeance, you may have justice, but you will spend the remainder of your days in grief. If you save someone, you will discover that life is not just, but it need not be filled with sorrow.

"The human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it's not shouting. Even when it's just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard--over armies...when it's telling the truth."