Blur’s new album, The Ballad of Darren, is coming out on July 21 via Parlophone. This is the band’s first new album in eight years following 2015’s The Magic Whip. This announcement comes with the new song “The Narcissist”. Each member of the band shared a brief summary of the collection in a statement.

Damon Albarn: “This is an aftershock record, reflection and comment on where we find ourselves now.”

Graham Coxon: “The older and madder we get, it becomes more essential that what we play is loaded with the right emotion and intention. Sometimes just a riff doesn’t do the job.”

Alex James: “For any long term relationship to last with any meaning you have to be able to surprise each other somehow and somehow we all continue to do that.”

Dave Rowntree: “It always feels very natural to make music together. With every record we do, the process reveals something new and we develop as a band. We don’t take that for granted.”

The music video for “The Narcissist” shows what appears to be a keyboard placed in front of a mirror. The lyrics describe contrast between light and darkness with Damon and Graham repeating “I’ll be shining a light in your eyes” and “With Godspeed I’ll heed the signs”. This appears to describe blindness; the viewer is unable to see outside the scope of the darkness. There is a lot of repetition in this song with a chorus repeating the keywords in almost every line.

The band is performing this year’s Primavera Sound and will caption two Wembley Stadium shows in July. Before them, they have a show tomorrow in their hometown, Colchester, Essex, at the Colchester Arts Theatre

The Ballad of Darren:

01 The Ballad

02 St Charles Square

03 Barbaric

04 Russian Strings

05 The Everglades (For Leonard)

06 The Narcissist

07 Goodbye Albert

08 Far Away Island

09 Avalon

10 The Heights