Wiki
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Release Date
15 November 2018
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Length
11 tracks
Merrie Land is the second and final studio album by English art rock supergroup The Good, the Bad & the Queen. It was produced by Tony Visconti and released on 16 November 2018.
The band announced the album with the single "Merrie Land" and news that they would embark on a five-date tour of the UK in early December 2018. In an interview for The Scotsman, Albarn commented that the album is "a reluctant goodbye letter” to the European Union following Brexit, and "a series of observations and reflections on Britishness in 2018." A video released for "Merrie Land" featured Albarn dressed as a ventriloquist's dummy singing and gesturing in front of a backdrop of pastoral images and English landscapes.
The band released the second single from the album, "Gun to the Head", on 5 November 2018. The track features "organ, bassoon, recorder, and a British Invasion-style ensemble pop hook lend the song a cheery boardwalk shine, undercut by Albarn's knotty lyrics of conspiratorial and repressive governance." The video released for "Gun to the Head" also featured Albarn dressed as a ventriloquist's dummy, but with backup dummies and a black backdrop. Three additional "warm-up shows" for the band in late November 2018 were announced alongside the release of the second single and its video.
Sessions for the album started in January 2017, when Albarn, Simonon and Tong spent time in Blackpool, which was originally going to be its main focus. However, Albarn expanded the focus of the album over the next two years while touring with Gorillaz for the albums Humanz and The Now Now.
In an interview with The Guardian, the band members admitted that Merrie Land shares creative attributes with its predecessor, The Good, the Bad & the Queen, but stylistically the two are dissimilar. Simonon characterised Merrie Land as "modern English folk music with a bit of rub-a-dub in it" while Allen noted "this time around, people can dance". The interview, conducted by music critic John Harris, focused on the album's inspiration in the Brexit vote, and how that impacted the themes on Merrie Land. Where the band's first album was "murky" in its depiction of London, Merrie Land " the contorted confusion of Brexit", and "widens its focus beyond the capital and has an even sharper sense of place." Simonon also highlighted the album's title as "kind of to people's nostalgic, sentimental vision of how England used to be. And it never really existed."
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