It has been way too long. And they say you only recognise the true value of something when it’s gone, but that’s not quite true. You can only miss something once you’ve realised it’s gone. And sometimes to realise you need to be reminded. Like receiving a postcard or seeing a painting or a video of a place full of memories – but memories consigned by the years to the archives of your mind – is like opening a door to your caged memoirs, brittle from years of disuse. And then so happy you are to find this lost treasure that from your selective recollection and maybe a few fictional additions of your own, what you’re encountering now far outweighs the reality of the original experience. All you really need to know about ‘Cedars’ is that this album is that picture postcard or painting.
Presuming that Clearlake, the fictional town created as a setting for this band’s creativity, had long blown off the map, subsided into the sea or fallen to ruin, makes it such a glory to find that it’s evolved into this. In memory at least. 2001 saw the utterly special debut ‘Lido’, documenting Clearlake’s woes and mundanities with a lyrical clarity, burning a wick through off-kilter indieisms and giving the impression of a blank canvas that slightly betrayed the look of four men who’d blend into the background of any average Camden boozer. And ‘Cedars’ is just that, but more of course. It’s not like a digitally enhanced version, multiple-angle re-shoot with bigger, brighter, shinier lights, more a trip over its roof-tops in a hot air balloon with a Super-8 camera ticking over. Something that bit more grand.
The moment the record kicks off with the uncharacteristically stormy ‘Almost The Same’ it’s clear that constraints have been lifted. Either way, you can’t choose to amble when at the wind’s behest. Lead town planner Jason Pegg still sounds like a genetic compromise between Morrissey and Damon Albarn and is thus in perfect control of lyrics such as “I wouldn’t hurt a fly, but I really want to punish you”, often sounding meek and masterful, sullen and sarcastic within the same breath. The record breathes a very British breath, is very correct in its eccentricisms, ambitious but not uncouth, typical to its surroundings. Surroundings built on a foundation of ‘Great Eastern’-esque Delgados lushness and late-Blur Coxon-esque squibbles. This is probably the record Blur should have made next. Likelihood is they haven’t. The first truly great record of the year. You have missed them, believe us.