The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Merrie Land

Merrie Land is the second studio album by Supergroup The Good, The Bad & The Queen, released in November 2018 via Studio 13.

The Good, The Bad & The Queen is a supergroup band comprising of Damon Albarn, Paul Simonon, Tony Allen and Simon Tong.

Following an eleven-year hiatus since their eponymous debut, the four musical storytellers are back with Merrie Land, which will be self-released on the newly created label Studio 13.

Produced by Tony Visconti and The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Merrie Land contains ten new songs - written during the current period in which the UK is preparing to leave the European Union - creating a reluctant good-bye letter, a series of observations and reflections on Britishness in 2018.

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 "evokes 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 [alluding] to people's nostalgic, sentimental vision of how England used to be. And it never really existed…”

The album cover features a photograph of Michael Redgrave from the 1945 horror movie Dead Of Night, in which he plays a ventriloquist taken over by his dummy.

This album is on 180 gram heavyweight black vinyl with a printed inner sleeve, pressed in Europe via Studio 13.