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The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen (2007)

Posted By: Designol
The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen (2007)

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen (2007)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 280 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 107 Mb | Scans included
Label: Honest Jon's / Parlophone | # 373 0672 / 0946 3 73067 2 7
Alternative/Indie Rock, Art Rock | Time: 00:42:58

To open this oddball supergroup's debut, Paul Simonon hints at "Guns of Brixton," and when Tony Allen's flex rhythms come in, there's a shadow of Fela Kuti, too. Then Damon Albarn's slow grit of a voice enters–framed by Simon Tong's flecked guitar. And collectively, The Good, the Bad, & the Queen is quickly sui generis, adamantly different than anything you think you've heard. A band with this much power has at least two options: to cut loose raucously or to mute their overt power for a more covert, dub-inflected atmospheric potency. Smartly, Albarn and his crew opt for the half-light of elastic bass lines, the clouds between the parentheses of drums–the covert. It's not until "Kingdom of Doom," the erstwhile 'single' of the album, that motion expands beyond the languorous. And even then, Tony Allen largely sits out. You get the full flush of Simonon and Allen on "Three Changes" shuffling time even while holding the tempo to a dubbish gait. It's not Blur, the Clash, Fela, the Verve, or Gorillaz. It's more than just names on albums.

Review by Andrew Bartlett

Around the turn of the millennium – just after the release of Blur's moody sixth album, 13 – Damon Albarn began to quietly back away from the very concept of fronting a rock band, turning his attention to a series of collaborative projects that soon overshadowed his main gig. First there was the electro-bubblegum group Gorillaz, which afforded Albarn the opportunity to masquerade behind a cartoon, a move that allowed him to let his music speak louder than his fame, a method that he found irresistible as he began to do several projects similar to this, including a voyage to Africa documented on Mali Music, along with other less-publicized forays into soundtracks. In this context, the post-Graham Coxon Blur albumThink Tank seemed less like a band effort than another conceptual project directed by Albarn instead of the work of a band, which is what all these new-millennium projects were at their core, including the Good, the Bad & the Queen, a quartet comprised of himself, Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong, and Tony Allen, Fela Kuti's drummer, who was name-checked in Blur's "Music Is My Radar," and whose eponymous 2007 album is produced by Danger Mouse, who previously collaborated with Albarn on Gorillaz's second album, 2005's Demon Days.

A flurry of pre-release activity compared The Good, the Bad & the Queen to Blur's 1994 masterpiece Parklife, as it represents a conscious return to Albarn writing songs specifically about London at a particular point in time. Thematically accurate though this may be, it is also misleading, suggesting that Albarn is also returning to the bright, colorful, clever guitar pop that made his reputation – something akin to Coxon's reclamation of that sound on his excellent recent solo albums, Happiness in Magazines and Love Travels at Illegal Speeds. That couldn't be farther from the truth, as The Good, the Bad & the Queen is deliberately drained of color and mired in moodiness. If Parklife exuberantly captured the giddiness of the mid-'90s, as fashions and politics changed, ushering in New Labor, Britpop, and new lad culture, The Good, the Bad & the Queen captures how all that optimism has calcified into weary cynicism, as the endless opportunities of the '90s have given way to a warring world that seems to lack any center or certainty. So, in that sense, it is a cousin to Parklife in how it captures a national mood, but in sheer sonic terms, the closet antecedent of Albarn's is Demon Days, which traced out an apocalyptic vision despite its insistent pop hooks. Which isn't to say that The Good, the Bad & the Queen is a Gorillaz album in disguise, nor should Simonon's presence suggest that this is the second coming of London Calling; if anything, GBQ suggest the Specials at their most haunted, which is hardly uncharacteristic of Damon, who has always used "Ghost Town" as a blueprint whenever he's wanted to get spooky.

Despite these echoes of the past – and there are other echoes, too, arriving in Simonon's thundering dub bass, Tong's spectral guitars, Allen's nimble rhythms, and Albarn's vaudevillian piano and carnivalesque organ – The Good, the Bad & the Queen is most certainly its own distinctive thing, the product of five iconoclastic musicians working a theme endlessly, relentlessly, and inventively, producing music that plays more like a movie than an album. Early on, as "History Song" eases into view on a circular acoustic guitar phrase, it establishes an alluring, dank, and artfully dour mood that the band continually expands and explores without ever letting the gloom lift. But for as dark as this is, GBQ never sounds despairing – it's wearily resigned, as Albarn and his bandmates prefer to luxuriously wallow in the murk instead of finding a way out of it. There's a comfort in its melancholy, particularly in how the album glides from one elegantly doleful song to another, but at times the album almost sounds too samey, with no individual song emerging from the whole. Part of the reason for this is Danger Mouse's production: it's as subtle and clever as ever, but built largely in the post-production – to the extent that he'll mix out Allen for large stretches of the album just for the aural effect. He's orchestrated a unified, dramatic album – it's a tapestry of impeccable, sorrowful, yet sultry soundscapes – but given the pedigree of this band, it's hard not to wish that the album offered more of the quartet just playing, gussied up with no effect. Nevertheless, as an album The Good, the Bad & the Queen is singularly effective, bringing the roiling melancholy undercurrent of Demon Days to the surface and creating a murky, mud-streaked impressionistic rock noir that's sinisterly seductive in its gloom.

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen (2007)



Tracklist:

01. History Song (03:06)
02. 80's Life (03:28)
03. Northern Whale (03:54)
04. Kingdom of Doom (02:42)
05. Herculean (03:59)
06. Behind the Sun (02:38)
07. The Bunting Song (03:47)
08. Nature Springs (03:10)
09. A Soldier's Tale (02:30)
10. Three Changes (04:15)
11. Green Fields (02:26)
12. The Good, the Bad & the Queen (07:00)


Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 3 from 28. July 2007

EAC extraction logfile from 23. July 2009, 15:55

The Good, The Bad & The Queen / The Good, The Bad & The Queen

Used drive : Optiarc BD ROM BC-5100S Adapter: 3 ID: 2

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 667
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
Additional command line options : -V -8 -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 3:05.73 | 0 | 13947
2 | 3:05.73 | 3:28.14 | 13948 | 29561
3 | 6:34.12 | 3:54.10 | 29562 | 47121
4 | 10:28.22 | 2:42.65 | 47122 | 59336
5 | 13:11.12 | 3:59.48 | 59337 | 77309
6 | 17:10.60 | 2:38.34 | 77310 | 89193
7 | 19:49.19 | 3:47.21 | 89194 | 106239
8 | 23:36.40 | 3:10.02 | 106240 | 120491
9 | 26:46.42 | 2:30.00 | 120492 | 131741
10 | 29:16.42 | 4:15.03 | 131742 | 150869
11 | 33:31.45 | 2:26.25 | 150870 | 161844
12 | 35:57.70 | 7:00.22 | 161845 | 193366


Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename E:\The Good, The Bad & The Queen - 2007 - The Good, The Bad & The Queen\The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen.wav

Peak level 99.9 %
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 02F24024
Copy CRC 02F24024
Copy OK

No errors occurred


AccurateRip summary

Track 1 accurately ripped (confidence 134) [6F940BF7]
Track 2 accurately ripped (confidence 135) [617CB1C1]
Track 3 accurately ripped (confidence 135) [75C41F25]
Track 4 accurately ripped (confidence 136) [3738BF86]
Track 5 accurately ripped (confidence 135) [A10A6134]
Track 6 accurately ripped (confidence 135) [2855FB87]
Track 7 accurately ripped (confidence 135) [A7A8880F]
Track 8 accurately ripped (confidence 135) [28CB29D6]
Track 9 accurately ripped (confidence 135) [F0DD7077]
Track 10 accurately ripped (confidence 133) [EAA685AA]
Track 11 accurately ripped (confidence 134) [785A7B0C]
Track 12 accurately ripped (confidence 134) [8F8927DD]

All tracks accurately ripped

End of status report

foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2014-04-30 21:21:29

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: The Good, The Bad & The Queen / The Good, The Bad & The Queen
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR7 0.00 dB -9.51 dB 3:06 01-History Song
DR6 -0.01 dB -7.92 dB 3:28 02-80's Life
DR7 0.00 dB -8.05 dB 3:54 03-Northern Whale
DR7 -0.01 dB -8.30 dB 2:43 04-Kingdom of Doom
DR6 0.00 dB -7.81 dB 4:00 05-Herculean
DR9 0.00 dB -10.66 dB 2:38 06-Behind the Sun
DR8 -0.01 dB -9.81 dB 3:47 07-The Bunting Song
DR9 0.00 dB -10.80 dB 3:10 08-Nature Springs
DR8 -0.01 dB -9.64 dB 2:30 09-A Soldier's Tale
DR6 0.00 dB -7.65 dB 4:15 10-Three Changes
DR7 0.00 dB -9.19 dB 2:26 11-Green Fields
DR6 0.00 dB -8.66 dB 7:00 12-The Good, the Bad & the Queen
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 12
Official DR value: DR7

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 885 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen (2007)

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen (2007)

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