Popular Britpop band Blur have shared a new unreleased track titled ‘Sticks And Stones’ from their latest album ‘The Ballad Of Darren‘ via NME. The track follows the band’s two other releases, ‘The Rabbi’ and ‘The Swan’, released as part of the album’s deluxe edition. ‘Sticks And Stones’ will be released as a bonus track for the Japanese exclusive edition of ‘The Ballad Of Darren’. ‘The Ballad Of Darren’ arrived on Friday, July 21.
Guitarist Graham Coxon provides lead vocals on the track. The song features a mid-tempo beat with a psychedelic feel. “It’s written over my face / No sleep zone / Open up my suitcase / Sticks and stones” sings Coxon during the songs chorus.
Meanwhile, Blur frontman Damon Albarn and producer James Ford have recently shared an insight into the recording of the band’s latest The Ballad Of Darren album. It has come to light that few plugins were used in its recording, and as for the gear, that turned out to be “a bit irrelevant.”
The recording process did result in “the first real Blur album in 20 years”.
James Ford and Damon Albarn recently joined the Tape Notes podcast and shed light on the super-quick recording of The Ballad Of Darren, which took place at the start of this year. It saw the band working on up to four tracks a day from a selection of 30 demos they started the session with.
“At the beginning, it was quite intense,” says Ford via Music Radar, “because we were going through, like, three or four basic tracks a day just playing and jamming over them, intending to get a feel for it. Before we knew it, it was only a few weeks in and we were listening back to a rough version of the album. It was just like, let’s just keep moving as quick as we can.”
