What can you say, a 30 year relationship. There’s trust. There’s a shared experience. Some things have been lost, some gained. For their ninth album together, The Ballad of Darren, Blur returns with a starkly humanistic album full of catharsis.

I was reminded of the idea of the philosophical pharmakon – something that is a scapegoat; both the poison and the cure. Frontman Damon Albarn shared that this is “an aftershock record, [a] reflection and comment on where we find ourselves now.”

Reflect in the now alongside Blur with The Ballad of Darren, our Album of the Week.