In the Blur versus Oasis scrap I was always firmly on the side of Pulp, but let me add my own small blogsqueak of approval to those who are saying that “The Good the Bad and the Queen,” is a half-decent record...I'd go further...and suggest that it definitely represents not just the incursion of the Hauntology ethic into the mainstream but pretty much that “genres” high watermark (no pun intended) all the Blairite, bouncy, Cool Brittania cockiness and optimism has soured here, the drizzle is palbable, as is the disillusion, it's Grim Brittania revenant, the ghosts of thirty years of endlessly recycled Britpop tropes worn almost threadbare, clattering and colliding, bleeding into each other, dissolving and recongealing. The ethic's less “cut and paste” than graft and blend, not jarring, not filled with po-mo overstatement (note the Telling Juxtaposition of genres!) but aiming at a seamlessly evocative forward drift. Oddly lovely, it is in fact grimly bucolic, if you can imagine such a thing, a picnic on a bit of abandoned ground between the factories, "Strawberry fields” on a horribly overcast mid Februrary morning with the developers moving in. Albarn’s voice is depleted, anemic, too resigned to even manage any bile, floating downstream gazing forlornly at the oil-slicked water, mumbling half-forgotten old music hall tunes to himself as a ruined country glides past.