Blur: The Magic Whip

BLUR: THE MAGIC WHIP (2015)

1) Lonesome Street; 2) New World Towers; 3) Go Out; 4) Ice Cream Man; 5) Thought I Was A Spaceman; 6) I Broadcast; 7) My Terracotta Heart; 8) There Are Too Many Of Us; 9) Ghost Ship; 10) Pyongyang; 11) Ong Ong; 12) Mirrorball.

Okay. Hold your breath no longer. Blur have come back — with a «comeback» album. Who said miracles are bound to happen? They aren't. Most comeback albums are just that — «comeback albums», defined as «collections of songs produced when former bandmates come together for the sake of old times, fans, and money, without anything particularly fresh to say». This does not necessarily mean that the music is bad — it only means that the music does not let you discover anything new about the musicians, and that there was no reason whatsoever to wait for this to happen with one's fingers crossed.

At least Think Tank was Damon Albarn's noble-treacherous attempts to turn «Blur» into «The Trendy Damon Albarn Experience». Failing that, Damon Albarn went on to churn out trendy experiences all by himself. Now that he got a bit bored with that, too, Blur come together once more, in all the glory of their classic lineup — but no, they do not continue their journey from the stage where we last saw them with 13. That journey was long since terminated. Instead, what we see them do is deliver a «Certified Blur Album». Along the well-known lines of: «If you loved Modern Life Is Rubbish / Parklife / Great Escape / Blur, you'll like this». And if you do not, how can you call yourself a Blur fan, you silly person you?

I mean, just listen to that opening of ʽLonesome Streetʼ. Street noises, okay. Brief jazz guitar intro, okay. A rollickin' acoustic arpeggio, all right. But as soon as the entire band kicks in at 0:15 into the song, there's absolutely no mistaking that this is the Blur — the Blur of the early classic Brit-pop era. Gosh, those chords, I mean, you could feed the songs off Modern Life Is Rubbish inside a computer and it would spit out ʽLonesome Streetʼ for you. The only difference is that, unfortunately, ʽLonesome Streetʼ is completely uncatchy, which raises my suspicions even fur­ther — maybe they have been working on Blur-software all this time?

Admittedly, the opening number is not indicative of the entire album. And truth be told, The Magic Whip on the whole does not produce the impression that it was simply written as «yet another Blur album». No and no — on the contrary, the main flaw of this record is that it tries too hard (and ultimately fails, I'd say) to make a big statement, one that goes way beyond pure music and, because of that, does not pay that much attention to music. The record is well produced and, on the surface, looks complex and carefully detailed, but that is mainly technological: for instance, there is a lot of electronic overdubs, reflecting Albarn's digital fetish of the past fifteen years, yet somehow, they all feel a little... «autopilotish», if you get my drift.

Instead of writing awesome songs, what Albarn tries to do here is write songs that make big claims. Songs with titles like ʽThere Are Too Many Of Usʼ — that one, I think, would be parti­cularly embarrassing to perform in public, yet they do it and the public does not care, even if lines like "There are too many of us / That's plain to see / And we all believe in praying / For our im­mortality" could easily be construed as offensive to seven billion people, even if they may be somewhat true (but isn't truth offensive?). Songs about lonesome loneliness of the lonely loner: ʽLonesome Streetʼ, ʽThought I Was A Spacemanʼ. Songs about alienation, songs about love lost, songs of disillusionment, songs of misanthropy, and even a song called ʽPyongyangʼ, and guess what, it ain't a celebratory anthem in honor of The Great Leader. Rather, it is a song sung from the point of view of the deceased Great Leaders, and... they're lonely too, in a way.

All in all, you know now: The Magic Whip, from top to bottom, is an album about loneliness. Okay, so that could be a continuation of 13, much of which was about loneliness, too. But 13 was a much more psychedelic, and a much less serious experience — Whip, in comparison, is like a musical thesis from a mature half-poet, half-sociologist. And, by the way, where is Coxon in all of that? I have no idea. The songs are all credited to all the members of the band, in a fit of demo­cratic generosity, but Graham almost never sings, except a couple co-lead vocal parts, and his playing is very restricted: guitar solos are now presumably considered tasteless, and guitar riffs way too often seem to be there only to ensure that «Blur sound».

And so that's that: on one hand, the album is a «mature» musical treatise on how uncomfortable it feels to be alive in 2015, and on the other hand — it is an unconscious throwback to the hip and cocky days of 1993-99. ʽLonesome Streetʼ, ʽGo Outʼ, and ʽOng Ongʼ sound like they belong on Parklife; ʽNew World Towersʼ and ʽMy Terracotta Heartʼ are melancholic darknesses that sound like they belong on Great Escape; ʽI Broadcastʼ is a noisefest that could belong on Blur; and ʽThought I Was A Spacemanʼ and ʽPyongyangʼ are ghostly whisps that could be on 13. Well, something like that. But when you put them all together and extract the common invariant, it's all about the good man feeling bad and wanting to be somewhere else, or with someone else. It might be too much, perhaps, to state that Albarn is feeling like Kim Il-sun in his glass coffin, but hey, it's not my fault if he makes that kind of music.

The good news is that eventually, slowly, very slowly the songs might begin to pull you in. They are serious and they are intelligent, and if a band that was among the best of their ilk in the 1990s comes back together fifteen years later and decides to make a serious, intelligent album, well, it is not very likely that they will create a complete dump. The gloomy atmosphere is real, the lyrics are good, and there's plenty of juicy little details — well, like that little morose riff that Graham is playing in between the verses of ʽNew World Towersʼ, or like the funereal approach to surf guitar on the closing ʽMirrorballʼ.

The bad news is that, well, I dunno about you, but there are certain types of albums I wouldn't want to expect from certain types of bands, and as much as I acknowledge Blur's right to sound somber and pessimistic every now and then, I don't want a Blur album that just sounds like one big dirge, because Damon Albarn ain't no frickin' Robert Smith, much less a goddamn Nick Cave. The same guy who literally spent decades partying in and out of every trendy party in the UK and worldwide is now teaching us all a lesson in loneliness, reclusiveness, and misanthropy? Come on now, this just doesn't feel right. Ten minutes into the album, I just get this urge to tell the guy to cheer up, already — this all begins bordering on emo, if not Goth, and this is not what we needed Blur to reunite for. It ain't bad, but it doesn't quite sound right, either.

I do give the album a thumbs up. It is a slow grower, and it will eventually grow some more on me, I guess, though not that much more. And compared to some other «comebacks», this one at least tries to make some points, rather than just sound like an inefficient imitation of past glories. But ultimately, it is an inefficient imitation of past glories, and that casts an unlucky shadow on all the points it tries to make, and this is why I seriously doubt that The Magic Whip will ever be in many people's «top five», let alone «top three» Blur albums.

And oh yeah, by the way, what's up with the Chinese title? I know they recorded most of it in Hong Kong, but it's not as if there was any Chinese influence in the songs themselves — are we supposed to pat the Damon on the back for letting us know about his adoration of traditional Chinese characters? Or are they trying to boost sales in China? Oh well, at least now everybody knows that Blur is Mohu in Chinese. They probably used Google Translate anyway. It's not as if it were an album that offered particularly complex solutions to complex problems.

Blur: Live In Hyde Park

BLUR: LIVE IN HYDE PARK (2009)

1) She's So High; 2) Girls And Boys; 3) Tracy Jacks; 4) There's No Other Way; 5) Jubilee; 6) Badhead; 7) Beetle­bum; 8) Out Of Time; 9) Trimm Trabb; 10) Coffee And TV; 11) Tender; 12) Country House; 13) Oily Water; 14) Chemical World; 15) Sunday Sunday; 16) Parklife; 17) End Of A Century; 18) To The End; 19) This Is A Low; 20) Popscene; 21) Advert; 22) Song 2; 23) Death Of A Party; 24) For Tomorrow; 25) The Universal.

In their heyday, Blur never got around to releasing a live album, except for a highly limited issue of a Live At Budokan thing that has since become a discographic rarity. Once, however, the rift between Albarn and Coxon got partially remedied and the reunited band started delighting fans with occasional gigs at the end of the 2000s, a whole series of live albums ensued — most of them, surprisingly or not, recorded in the exact same spot: Hyde Park, London. Granted, this is probably the hipper one of the two centers of the world (the other one being Madison Square Garden, but that be Bruce Springsteen's and Billy Joel's royal domain, after all), but still, kind of weird to see not one, but two live albums from Hyde Park appear in mid-2009 (the July 2 and July 3 shows, respectively), and then Parklive follow up on them in 2012; the first two albums have completely identical setlists, and the one on Parklive is only slightly different.

I have the slightly easier available July 3 show available, and have also seen the Parklive DVD, which probably empowers me not to separate this text into three different reviews. Most impor­tantly, Blur ain't no Rolling Stones or Grateful Dead when it comes to live shows — in fact, I am that close to saying that they pretty much suck as a live band, or at least as a provider of live albums. For starters, I think they make very poor choices in mixing engineers, or perhaps this is just the inevitable curse of a huge open venue like Hyde Park: the sound is godawful on both the older audio and the newer video album. The guitar is too noisy, and the voice is drowning in the noise — what used to be brilliantly produced and packaged pop-rock songs is regularly reduced to unappealing, sloppy noise-rock, with all the hooks covered in sonic rubble, and the crowd noises placed way too high in the mix. Being one with the crowd is great and all, but I kinda sorta would like to hear my ʽGirls And Boysʼ and ʽTenderʼ from the mouth of their creator rather than 500,000 ecstatic English people.

On the other hand, it's not as if the mouth of their creator worked so efficiently in a live setting. Albarn does not look like a perfect natural when it comes to singing — in the studio, it seems as if he had to work hard to combine the necessary degree of emotionality with technique, and when he does not have that opportunity, things are not good. He can get off key, flub some key lines, and, most importantly, he can lose that cool-as-heck London sneer and replace it with a punkish power brawl, making the songs sound far more ordinary and boring than they really are. Coxon does a much better job, very loyally reproducing most of the guitar melodies and effects, but since he hardly ever tries to explore new possibilities, it all ultimately comes down to «how well has he nailed that?», and it's always well enough, but not perfect enough.

In the end, it all simply becomes a massive celebration of The Realm of Blur: we are supposed to kowtow and acknowledge their historic mission and spiritual value for dozens of thousands of people in the UK. I kowtow, and I acknowledge, and I am happy for everybody at Hyde Park in 2009 and in 2012, but the fact remains that there is not a single song here that I would either (a) enjoy more than the original studio version or (b) start perceiving from a slightly different angle from the original. Had this been my introduction to Blur, I would have remained totally unim­pressed, no matter how spectacular the setlist might look on paper. And speaking of the setlist, The Great Escape gets mighty snubbed once again. That is not cool: I want to hear live versions of ʽCharmless Manʼ and ʽStereotypesʼ, even if they will probably suck like everything else.

In addition, there are such issues as tremendously long pauses at the end of the show (usually edited out on non-bootlegs, but apparently they needed to justify two CDs), silly audience baits (when they get them to woo-hoo during the extended drum intro to ʽSong 2ʼ — I mean, seeing as how it has become their signature song and all, it'd at least be fun to see them turn it live into an extended jam polygon or something, like the Who did with ʽMy Generationʼ, but no dice), and an occasional enigmatic bit of Albarn banter: apparently, "Vote Dave! Vote Dave!" refers not to David Cameron (thank God!), but to Dave Rowntree, the drummer, who was trying to run for Parliament at the time (and no, it didn't help).

To sum it up: Blur are a great pop-rock band, but only a passable live band. Live playing is not one of their major strengths (not that the same criticism doesn't apply to the vast majo­rity of pop-rock bands from the last two decades, of course), and since, up to this point, their half-hearted reunions have only resulted in live albums, there has not really been a lot of sense in that reunion, other than heat Hyde Park up a couple degrees on a nice summer day. No thumbs down (there's so many great songs here, and they manage not to murder at least half of them), but no serious excitement, either. See them if you ever have the chance — a legend is a legend, after all — but for the ideal moving picture, choose a set of lip-synced videos instead.

Blur: Think Tank

BLUR: THINK TANK (2003)

1) Ambulance; 2) Out Of Time; 3) Crazy Beat; 4) Good Song; 5) On The Way To The Club; 6) Brothers And Sisters; 7) Caravan; 8) We've Got A File On You; 9) Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club; 10) Sweet Song; 11) Jets; 12) Gene By Gene; 13) Battery In Your Leg.

Put it this way: Blur without Graham Coxon is like The Rolling Stones without Keith Richards. You wouldn't totally want to deny Mick Jagger the right to create good music without his druggy-dreary pal (and he did create some good music on his own), but it wouldn't be Rolling Stones music unless he'd manage to dig out Keith Richards' identical twin on guitar. As for Damon Al­barn — not only did he not bother at all about digging out Graham Coxon's identical twin, but he pretty much decided that Blur's next album would be all right with no guitar at all, or, at least, as little of it as possible. Who ever laid down the law about each new Blur album having to be guitar-based, anyway? Nothing about that in the recording contract, for sure.

The real problem with Think Tank, however, is not that it is not a «proper Blur album»: the real problem is that it is simply not a very good album, period. The Albarn/Coxon relationship was, in fact, very similar to the Jagger/Richards one in that the former partner brought in the «coolness» and the latter brought in the meat'n'potatoes. Now that there is no more meat'n'potatoes, it turns out, somehow, that «coolness», on its own, results in much more confusion than admiration. Think Tank may very well have been designed in a think tank indeed — it sizzles and bursts with creativity-a-plenty, nary a single track following in the shoes of any preceding one — but as «creative» as these compositions are, most of them are fairly meaningless, designed just for the purpose of sitting there and looking cool.

Interestingly, two out of three singles culled from the album had some of its least experimental and «tamest» songs as A-sides: ʽOut Of Timeʼ and ʽGood Songʼ are soft rhythmic ballads, show­casing Damon's tender-and-gentle side and even featuring a romantic Spanish guitar solo passage on the former. Actually, ʽOut Of Timeʼ has become one of the few songs here to endure, later to be incorporated into the regular Blur setlist with Graham returning — still I am not impressed, what with the rather primitive melody and Damon's inability to forge out a proper hook (even if the "you haven't found the time... to open up your mind" bit seems like an explicit melodic quota­tion from ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ). It is curious, though, that with all the «crazy» ideas explored on the album, the maximum promotion was allocated for its easily-accessible, sentimental bits: apparently, Albarn cares a lot about the «crooner» side of his image.

The second single, however, was ʽCrazy Beatʼ, and it is horrible. I used to think the guttural-elec­tronic "crazy beat, crazy beat, crazy beat yeah yeah yeah" bits were a parody on Crazy Frog, but apparently, the infantile Crazy Frog phenomenon only arose about half a year after Think Tank hit the stores, so we will have to assume it was Albarn's own folly. The song borrows the cool-arrogant-bastard attitude of Parklife and wastes it in a setting punctuated with hyper-moronic embellishments (intentionally ugly harmonies, guitars, and electronics) — I mean, at least ʽSong 2ʼ was honestly funny, and straightforwardly parodic, but ʽCrazy Beatʼ just has this "let's go CRAAAZY!" vibe, unfunny, mean, and manipulative. Without knowing for sure, I bet it must have been a real big hit in the clubs, but that does not make it any less stupid, only more harmful.

Most of the other tracks follow in the «crazy» footsteps of ʽCrazy Beatʼ, though, thankfully, few reach that level of annoyance. For ultra-extra-hipness, Albarn drove the band to Marrakesh, where they hooked up with local musicians to add a pinch of «world music» — something I have barely noticed upon first listen, to be honest, because it just does not feel as if all the elements of Britpop, electronica, and Eastern music mesh in naturally. Maybe it's all about the poorness of the mix, where frequently there is a lot of stuff happening in the background, but it all sounds like noisy garbage, or, at best, like distant echoes. Instead of «colorful», the entire record has this dirty-gray feel of the album cover, irritating and alienating rather than intriguing and mystifying. Some critics have called Think Tank «warm» and «inviting» — personally, I feel it's about as warm and inviting as a sheetmetal factory, but hey, some people like to be invited to sheetmetal factories. Get a taste of real life and all that.

Some of the grooves are nicely somber, like the R&B exercise of ʽBrothers And Sistersʼ (still spoiled by completely gratuitous electronic trickery), and some of the combinations work, like the lo-fi kiddie melody of ʽJetsʼ exchanging phrasing with its overweight, grumbly, distorted bassline (but why six minutes? why the out-of-nowhere sax solo?). In fact, as I said, almost every song has at least some creative idea in its favor, which is why I cannot bring myself to condemning the record. But on the whole, it is an absolute triumph of form over substance — as if with the de­parture of Coxon, the band pretty much lost its soul. They retained the will to experiment — in fact, they have developed a crazier drive for experimentation than ever — but they forgot that experimentation has to have a purpose, and even more so in the 21st century, when «crazy stuff for the sake of sheer craziness» has pretty much become a boring cliché. As time goes by, I feel less and less interested in Think Tank, when all the previous Blur albums still retain their fresh­ness and vitality to a certain degree. So much for «hipness» in all its glory. 

Blur: 13

BLUR: 13 (1999)

1) Tender; 2) Bugman; 3) Coffee & TV; 4) Swamp Song; 4) B.L.U.R.E.M.I.; 5) Battle; 6) Mellow Song; 7) Trailer­park; 8) Caramel; 9) Trimm Trabb; 10) No Distance Left To Run; 11) Optigan 1.

It feels strange to me that the band did not simply disintegrate into little pieces after recording 13, and that, apparently, truly serious bickering between Albarn and Coxon did not begin until the beginning of the sessions for their next record — because in certain important ways, 13 has a very much Abbey Road-like aura to it. It is undeniably a Blur album by signature, but a weird, unsettling, aurally distant Blur album, one that seems to dictate its own terms and generate its own warped universe around it. It hasn't got any «normal» pop songs, or, more accurately, all of its «normal» pop songs are uniformly «de-normalized», but this time, they do not take their cues from Pavement or Sonic Youth. They take them from any instinctive wave that has subconscious­ly rattled their brain — in the process, creating their strange psychedelic masterpiece.

Actually, just for the pleasure of contradicting myself, I think that the beginning of ʽTenderʼ owes a little something to Floyd's ʽWish You Were Hereʼ — the same croaky, creaky, hideously lo-fi guitar sound announcing the beginning of the song «from the back entrance», before the band kicks in properly, with all the right recording equipment. But then the song itself, of course, is more like Blur's ʽHey Judeʼ... or is it? ʽHey Judeʼ is an anthem of consolation and encouragement; ʽTenderʼ is more like a layer-by-layer buildup of positive energy that desperately seeks to be spent but finds no relief. "Come on, come on, come on, get through it... I'm waiting for that fee­ling, waiting for that feeling to come... Oh my baby, oh my baby, oh why, oh my..." — now that I am looking at those lyrics, I think I am beginning to know what the song is about (hint: medical advice may be sought in situations like these).

Subsequently, ʽTenderʼ is (a) tender, (b) powerful, (c) catchy, (d) hilarious, (e) unusually com­plex for a Blur pop song, with no less than four distinct vocal melodies, on top of which we also have gospel-styled vocal harmonies (another first for the band). It is a song without any obvious genre characteristics, and its length, stately tempo, and penchant for seductive pomposity (par­ticularly when Damon, in full preacher mode, grandly intones "love's the greatest thing that we have") suggest that on 13, Blur are finally positioning themselves as «rock royalty», scaling epic heights and dwarving competition and listeners alike.

But nothing could be farther from the truth, as ʽTenderʼ turns out to be the most — in fact, the only — «normal» tune on the album. Perhaps it was essentially an Albarn creation or something, because with ʽBugmanʼ, Coxon and his guitar take over and rarely let go again. Industrial guitar tones, colorful feedback, dissonant notes, polyphonic overdubs — 13 is a «weird guitar lover»'s paradise, and one of the best examples of what could be creatively done with the instrument at the turn of the century, especially when you have a brain every bit as creative as, say, Adrian Belew's, but have not been blessed with equal technical chops.

Not that Graham isn't a tender-hearted pop lover himself, deep inside his soul — ʽCoffee & TVʼ, which is personally his to the point of getting a solo vocal spot, has one of Blur's simplest, pop­piest melodies and an unbeatable falsetto hook in the chorus (or, rather, the hook comes from the clever «falsetto explosion» of the tension accumulated in the several previous bars). The humbly murmured melody agrees well with his declaration of introversion ("Sociability is hard enough for me / Take me away from this big bad world and agree to marry me" — as far as I know, no­body has properly agreed so far), but then he still has to add a set of agonizing, vibrato-rattled, distorted guitar solos with elements of atonality to this perfectly nice and poppy melody, just to remind us that nothing is, or should be, as simple as it looks.

ʽTenderʼ and ʽCoffee & TVʼ are the two songs that stick in your mind easiest of all, due to their pop hooks, but liking them is not equal to liking 13 as an album. To do that, one has to develop a feel for material like ʽBattleʼ and ʽCaramelʼ — long, meandering, spaced out vamps that are any­thing but boring: Coxon and Albarn have never been masters of the drawn-out crescendo (like all them «post-rock» heros) — instead of that, they just wait for one idea to exhaust itself and then freshen things up with additional electronic effects, countermelodies, guitar freakouts, tempo changes, whatever comes into their whacky heads. On ʽCaramelʼ in particular, you get to hear echoes of not only Pink Floyd, but also Can and other «Krautrock» pioneers — but still there's a pop heart beating somewhere very deep inside, a melancholic, nearly-dying pop heart this time, as the vibrating guitar riff sings "caramel, caramel" and Albarn is brooding on the implicit issue of yet another breakup. Yes, better to brood than to eat your vitamins if it results in mindblowing music like this — Syd Barrett would be proud of his disciples.

As usual, the album is a little longer than it probably ought to be, and sometimes prompts con­fusing flashbacks — for instance, the basic melody of ʽ1992ʼ rides the same two-chord pattern as ʽSingʼ from their debut album, and could be said to represent a technical update of ʽSingʼ for the upcoming millennium; but sound-wise, it is much more advanced than ʽSingʼ anyway, so the real reason to complain is that it might be one lengthy psychedelic adventure too many for an album that also has ʽBattleʼ, ʽCaramelʼ, and ʽTrimm Trabbʼ on it. But 13 also has shorter, more energe­tic, yet equally bizarre highlights for you: ʽTrailerparkʼ, for instance, an exercise in moody trip-hop that creates a vaguely menacing nocturnal atmosphere with its «moonlight keyboards», but the lyrics go "I'm a country boy, I got no soul, I lost my girl to the Rolling Stones" — uh? come again? Unless Albarn's girl's name happens to be Lisa Fischer, we are going to have to assume a metaphoric interpretation for this catchy passage. Naturally, the entire album is in sort of a con­fused-depressed mode of existence, but somehow this little jab at the Stones in the context of those phantasmagorical keyboards feels particularly perplexing.

One major disappointment of mine has not managed to dissipate over the years: I have never liked ʽNo Distance Left To Runʼ and I do not feel any big change coming on here. It features one more brief return to «normal» mode at the end of the album, but it is really a rather clumsy and melodically uninteresting alt-rock ballad that seems to sacrifice «artistry» in favor of puffed-up «honesty» — Damon Albarn with his heart bleeding on his sleeve. Conceptually, it might work — after a series of brutal nightmares, the protagonist wakes up and summarizes his feelings in a final decisive aria — but on its own, the song is not at all representative of Blur's compositional genius, and broken hearts, might I add, come a dozen a dollar this time of the season: cynical as it might sound, nobody is interested in Albarn's breakups, we are only interested in how that affects his musical output. ʽCaramelʼ and ʽTrailerparkʼ — now we're talking here. ʽNo Distance Left To Runʼ — I'd rather have Beth Gibbons or Elliott Smith enlightening me on the issue of broken hearts, depression, and disillusionment, and prefer the album end on a more impressionistic note. ʽCaramelʼ as the last track would have been great, for instance.

Still, this is Blur, and Blur are never perfect, end of story. But 13 is as close as they have ever come to overriding all clichés and harnessing, rather than worshipping, all their influences. If Leisure subscribed to the adjoining cults of «Madchester» and «shoegaze», and the next three albums were all adepts of the Holy Church of Britpop, and Blur cowered before the Great and Terrible American Indie scene, then 13 simply refuses to follow any organized religion. It goes deep, gets mad, stays dark, and probably should not be played under the influence of chemical substances to avoid a really nasty trip. All in all, yet another winner, and a perfectly satisfactory conclusion to a slightly flawed, but altogether tremendously consistent career (and let us pretend, for just a brief moment, that Think Tank never existed) — a hearty thumbs up here.

Blur: Blur

BLUR: BLUR (1997)

1) Beetlebum; 2) Song 2; 3) Country Sad Ballad Man; 4) M.O.R.; 5) On Your Own; 6) Theme From Retro; 7) You're So Great; 8) Death Of A Party; 9) Chinese Bombs; 10) I'm Just A Killer For Your Love; 11) Look Inside America; 12) Strange News From Another Star; 13) Movin' On; 14) Essex Dogs.

An album called Blur, released (seemingly) by a band named Blur and featuring (obviously) an authentic «blur» on the front sleeve, could be easily perceived as a debut — and, indeed, for Coxon and Albarn alike this was a career reboot. Having lost the popularity battle to Oasis, they cooled down towards «Britpop», and instead, decided to pursue what seemed like a more adven­turous road at the time, taking their new cues from contemporary American indie / lo-fi / avant­garde rock scene, with Sonic Youth and particularly Pavement usually namechecked as Coxon's primary influences at the time.

Since that whole scene has become a bit more jaded with the passing of time, and, I'd guess, far more praised by conservative critics than listened to by current audiences, this fact alone can cause plenty of skepticism. I mean, substituting Ray Davies for Stephen Malkmus as your chief musical guru? Not necessarily the wisest of choices and all. However, Blur do have two advan­tages on their hands. First, they are a pop band, and, regardless of whoever they choose to be their guiding light, be it Mantovani or Throbbing Gristle, they have no intention to stop being a pop band. Second, they are a good pop band — with a knack for catchy and meaningful pop melodies, so, regardless of what sort of tone, effect, or feedback they soak them in, the album is not going to be «over-the-top» experimental. (Check: Nothing against boldness, experimentation, and inno­vation — unless they are exclusively for boldness' and experimentation's own sake, which is a defect I have frequently associated with Pavement).

Anyway, few things in the Blur catalog are as awesomely cool as the beginning of ʽBeetlebumʼ, where Graham's guitar plays the part of a weird car engine, stalling at first, then revving up at a steady tempo. But whoever that «CHUNK-chook-chook-chook-CHUNK-chook-chook-chook» pattern was pilfered from, Albarn's vocal parts are pure Lennon — in one of his lazy-sleepy, yet wittily perceptive moods. The lyrics refer to sex, drugs, and not all that much rock'n'roll, as the arrangement eventually becomes more and more psychedelic and the song finally sort of explodes in a sonic kaleidoscope. The funny thing is, all of this is not as far removed from the values of Parklife and Great Escape as the album's descriptions so often make it seem — there is still something very much «British» about it all, not just Damon's vocals.

The story of ʽSong 2ʼ is well known: a brief musical joke that intended to parody the «grunge / alt-rock craze» of the 1990s, but was lost on most listeners, who embraced it seriously and turned it into Blur's signature song — «that ʽwoo-hoo!ʼ tune». In defense of the listeners', I am also always tempted to embrace it seriously, because it is one of the few examples of «happy grunge» that I know of. I mean, moshing along to ʽSmells Like Teen Spiritʼ is sort of a downer, when you really get down to it — being blown about the room as Albarn screams "WHEN I FEEL HEAVY METAL!..." is a completely different sensation. It's as if they were Ramonifying the genre, ma­king this heavy music as friendly as possible, and the feeling is contagious.

It is only after this opening one-two punch that Blur truly begins to intrude into some «weird» territory: ʽCountry Sad Ballad Manʼ is a fairly straightforward blues-pop tune in essence, but its production is lo-fi (making Albarn sound like a wretched bum from outer space) and its lead gui­tar parts are crooked and twisted, as Coxon tries to free himself from conventional chord sequen­ces and wants to become somebody like Marc Ribot, playing minimalistic dissonant bursts of notes that would seem normal for a wretched bum from outer space. It's not the epitome of catchi­ness, but it makes sense — an impressionistic musical portrait of an individual battered about by life one too many times.

From there on, they may go in any direction as long as there is something crooked and twisted about the chosen path. Some of the tracks rock out loud (ʽM.O.R.ʼ, ʽChinese Bombsʼ, ʽMovin' Onʼ), some reach out for the stars in a new coming of Syd Barrett (ʽTheme From Retroʼ, ʽStrange News From Another Starʼ), some continue the Lennon vibe (ʽYou're So Greatʼ sounds every bit like one of those heavily bootlegged «home tapes» that feature John strumming his guitar and trying out some freshly generated, raw-as-heck melody), some invoke a woozy drugged-out party spirit (ʽOn Your Ownʼ — hilariously, the drugged-out party is waved goodbye three tracks down the line, with ʽDeath Of A Partyʼ), some put on dark glasses, black leather, and descend into a smelly basement somewhere close to St. Marks' Place, in order to be tougher-than-tough and cooler-than-cool (ʽI'm Just A Killer For Your Loveʼ — doesn't that title alone make you shake in your boots?). There are no great melodic breakthroughs here, but on the whole, this is a classy way to refresh and reload the old Blur vibe.

The biggest uncertainty lies with the final track, ʽEssex Dogsʼ, an eight-minute piece of genuine avantgarde — ostensibly this record's ʽRevolution No. 9ʼ (or, rather, a condensed, slightly more melodic, version of Metal Machine Music), prudently tacked on to the end so that even if you dismiss it as a pretentious piece of unlistenable shit, you are still left with a perfectly legit, uninterrupted 48-minute album. Actually, I like some of the stuff that Coxon does with his guitar, particularly that opening riff which once again sounds like a vehicle winding up and down, stub­bornly refusing to start up properly — but on the whole, eight minutes of this stuff does look like overkill, especially coming from a band that had never properly specialized in the legacy of Lou Reed and John Cale. On the other hand, I guess that if something like ʽSong 2ʼ makes you a big star, you gotta have a nifty antidote like ʽEssex Dogsʼ on hand — play it for thirty minutes unin­terrupted at your stadium shows and nobody is going to confuse you with the Stone Temple Pilots any more. It's a dog-eat-dog world, you gotta be prepared for anything.

Honestly, I think this is a pretty damn good album poised for greatness, and that it still holds up very well after all those years — in fact, it might even hold up better than some of its influences, because, just like the Beatles, Blur have the capacity of «taming» those influences and adapting them to accessible purposes without compromising them. On Parklife and Great Escape, they sang catchy songs about the underbelly of society; on Blur, they make us sense that underbelly through the «ugly» musical moves, dissonance, and well-orchestrated chaos rather than the lyrics (which are often transformed into Joycian stream-of-consciousness rants) or the singing (which is often intentionally «downgraded» with lo-fi production). The shift was a gamble that could have very well failed, but it did not fail, and still deserves its strong thumbs up.

Blur: The Great Escape

BLUR: THE GREAT ESCAPE (1995)

1) Stereotypes; 2) Country House; 3) Best Days; 4) Charmless Man; 5) Fade Away; 6) Top Man; 7) The Universal; 8) Mr. Robinson's Quango; 9) He Thought Of Cars; 10) It Could Be You; 11) Ernold Same; 12) Globe Alone; 13) Dan Abnormal; 14) Entertain Me; 15) Yuko & Hiro.

Sometimes Englishmen blame themselves a bit too much for being Englishmen, which might look downright odd to an outsider. In early 1967, Mick Jagger made Between The Buttons, an album largely influenced by the Kinks, delving into pure pop, music hall, and stereotypical por­trayals of London society — of which, in less than two years, he deeply repented, and shifted his focus once again to faraway American influences, with good, but very different, results. No mat­ter how many Stones fans keep demonstrating their love for that record, he still won't budge about performing its songs live. He really be ol' Delta bluesman, see.

Fast forward almost twenty years, and Blur hammers out The Great Escape, their most quint­essentially «English-esque» album to-date. Unlike the Rolling Stones, Blur already had been tightly associated with the Britpop revival, so you'd probably expect the band to be deeply satis­fied with the results. But no — Damon Albarn told everybody that it was «messy», and in less than two years, Blur would shift their focus to... faraway American influences. No matter how many Blur fans kept demonstrating their love for that record, Albarn still won't budge about per­forming its songs live (except maybe ʽThe Universalʼ). He really be hip-cool American indie rocker, see. Not to be stereotyped, no.

Of course, the band has some tough memories to shed about the record — released at the climax of the ridiculous «battle of the bands» between Oasis and Blur, which was really little more than a clever marketing strategy, designed to heat up interest in both groups, but some of the punches were real, and when The Great Escape lost in popularity and recognition to Oasis' Morning Glory (which does not mean that it was not popular on its own — it broke all the way to the top of the charts, and Blur still won the «singles battle» with ʽCountry Houseʼ), the band emerged from this somewhat depressed and feeling the need for a big change.

But really, we do not need to know all that history, do we? Twenty years on, The Great Escape, cleansed from its silly marketologist context, re-emerges simply as another fine collection of oh-so-British songs, engineered by a bunch of snub-nosed, delightfully evil, er, I mean, ironic kids with a great knack for powerful hooks, if not necessarily for masterful psychological insights. Let's face it, for all of Albarn's lyrical trickery, the words of songs like ʽCharmless Manʼ or ʽStereotypesʼ sound a bit silly — he is portraying caricatures, not real people — then again, that is the way of artistic licence, all the way from Charles Dickens to Ray Davies and then way be­yond the British Isles, too. Anyway, we are not here for the words.

Instead, we are here to admire the sheer craftsmanship in a song like ʽStereotypesʼ, which, to my ears, contains the most kick-ass intro on a Blur record ever (and Blur are quite the masters of the kick-ass intro) — Coxon's opening two-chord bang is like a stone smashing through your living-room window, soon followed by a steady hail of similar ones as the rest of the band joins in, and Albarn's even-intoned "the suburbs they are dreaming they're a twinkle in her eye..." sounds even more arrogantly poised than his opening lines on ʽGirls & Boysʼ. The entire song, guitars, key­boards, vocals, drums even, is just one big friggin' sneer at people who believe that "there must be more to life than stereotypes" (or at people who do not believe that, whatever), and although there are, of course, musically far more heavy songs in the Blur catalog, few match the sheer vitriolity of ʽStereotypesʼ, which might explain, of course, why the band, in their stadium age, has preferred not to perform it any more.

A few tracks down the line, they almost repeat the same formula with ʽCharmless Manʼ. By now, Blur know their la-la-las and na-na-nas well enough to know how much they matter in tying a certain song to your brain, but I think that the biggest melodic accomplishment of the song is still its rather tricky chorus, with the necessity of switching to and back from falsetto in one-syllable turns, and the climactic buildup towards the resolution, which then cascades away into the na-na-nas. The message here is utterly insignificant in light of the form — this is really pop mastery of the highest order, far higher, in my opinion, than anything Oasis ever had to offer. And then there is that same cockiness, of course, and all those mockney diphthongs employed in the pro­nun­ciation of the word «Beaujolais» — irritating to some, perversely charming to others.

There's lots more stuff like that on The Great Escape, even if most of the other «character-driven» songs do not seem to quite reach the same level of sharpness. ʽCountry Houseʼ, the big hit single, is, of course, immaculate, with its slightly off-beat, drunken, carnivalesque attitude. ʽTop Manʼ has those deep gravelly backing vocals (as if a bunch of Tibetan monks suddenly opted for British citizenship), and the echoes and the whistles and the mock-paranoia. Somewhat worse, ʽDan Abnormalʼ, describing either a random victim of the TV virus or Damon Albarn him­self (the title is an anagram), or Damon Albarn himself as a random victim, is written in the psycho-cool electric pop style of Revolver, and once again channels our attention through (somewhat less distinctive) na-na-nahs. Even more worsier, ʽMr. Robinson's Quangoʼ condemns big bosses in a rather mish-mashy, non-descript manner, with lots of punch but little in the way of actual hooks (with its rapid melodic changes, trumpets and jazzy keyboard parts, it seems more influenced by Zappa than the Kinks or the Beatles, but why should this band be influenced by Zappa in the first place?).

Thus we smoothly make the transition from admiration into the gray zone — truth of the matter is, The Great Escape, like most Blur albums, is just too damn long, and could easily have four or five songs hacked off for integrity's sake. I will not publish my ideal track list and/or sequencing here, but will simply note that the album, on the whole, gets more and more boring as it progres­ses, with a particularly sharp quality drop-off after ʽThe Universalʼ. Blame it on the 1990s and their drive for «CD-length» records, but it's not as if these records can shed off the extra weight all by themselves in the iCloud era — you will still have to do the trimming on your own.

Fortunately, there is still some stylistic diversity. ʽBest Daysʼ is a beautiful melancholic ballad, with a slightly late-night jazzy feel at first, later resolving into the album's most emotionally com­plex chorus (love, pity, and irony all meshed in one as Albarn warns that "other people wouldn't like to hear you if you said that these are the best days of our lives"). ʽThe Universalʼ, not really a personal favorite of mine, is still rightfully admired for its epic character — this is Blur at their most «progressive», with symphonic orchestration, glorious choirs, far-reaching lyrics, and a grand climax that, once it is over, gives the impression of having just resolved all the most im­portant problems of the universe, so it is a little weird that there are eight more songs after that. It should have certainly replaced ʽYuko & Hiroʼ as the last track, or, at least, should have been placed right before ʽYuko & Hiroʼ — the latter, with its humble homebrewn pseudo-Japanese charm, would then have functioned as a complementary «piccolo finale» after the «gran finale», like a ʽHer Majestyʼ or something.

In any case, I can never really decide about which Blur album is better than others, because they all have their great moments and their share of filler, obligatory by some unwritten Blur law, so in the end, this is just another big thumbs up with certain reservations. People sometimes oppose Parklife as «the happy, upbeat Britpop album» to Great Escape as «the vitriolic, disconsolate Britpop album», but this is a gross simplification: Blur are not a «radiant» band by definition, and even their happiest songs are infused with gall, if you peer sharply enough. Okay, so I guess there are more songs here about loneliness than on Parklife, but that's all relative.

Perhaps the barbs are a little sharper and a little more poisonous here — this is merely a matter of nuance; anyway, I am not really interested in Albarn and Coxon so much for their skills at social comment as I am interested in their songwriting, and from that point of view, The Great Escape is every bit as consistent (and every bit as sometimes inconsistent) as Parklife in peppering you with cool, sti­mulating «Britpop hooks», whatever that might ever mean in musical terms. Only the album title is incomprehensible — where is the escape in question? Who is escaping, and whatever from? If we are to take the «loneliness album» judgement at face value, No Escape would have made more sense.

Blur: Parklife

BLUR: PARKLIFE (1994)

1) Girls And Boys; 2) Tracy Jacks; 3) End Of A Century; 4) Parklife; 5) Bank Holiday; 6) Badhead; 7) The Debt Collector; 8) Far Out; 9) To The End; 10) London Loves; 11) Trouble In The Message Centre; 12) Clover Over Dover; 13) Magic America; 14) Jubilee; 15) This Is A Low; 16) Lot 105.

Probably the closest thing to a «definitive Britpop manifesto» to have gone down in history as such — although one wonders just how much that reputation is due to the now-classic image of the two greyhounds on the front sleeve. Speaking strictly in melodic terms, Parklife offers little progress beyond the earlier established style: the band takes most of its structural cues from the Beatles and the Kinks circa 1966-67, slightly bending them to reflect some echoes of the punk and New Wave era, improving upon the production and taking serious care that the lyrics con­form to modern, not retro, values. But the good news is that the killer hooks keep coming — and that the band itself thinks that they have something important to say with these hooks.

«Keep it simple, but not stupid» is the now-established motto, and there ain't a single Blur track on which it would work better than on ʽGirls And Boysʼ — probably the definitive Blur song in that it will be impossible to forget it once you've heard it, just once. The nagging two-note synth pattern which completely dominates the song is a perfect sense irritator, as is the robotic chorus (for better effect, all of it should be sung in one breath, which is quite a feat, and in perfect Mock­ney, without which it would lose much of the effect): part of your brain will tend to dismiss the song as an exercise in idiocy, part of it will bend towards its inherent catchiness, and still another part will perceive the thinly veiled irony, as Blur declare themselves supreme rulers of the hip young crowds of London and send up so many of these crowds' values at the same time, most importantly, the whole concept of sexual freedom in the New Age of Man.

Then the cynicism gets even hotter on the title track, whose melody goes around in simple, steady, repe­titive circles, just like the figurative park stroller whose casual life is described by the (mostly spoken, provided by actor Phil Daniels) lyrics — note that not a single phrase or word directly condemns or ridicules «parklife», but Daniels' rather comical, puffed-up attitude, and the song's musical impersonation of «simplistic arrogance» make it hard to perceive ʽParklifeʼ as some sort of positive anthem. Rather, it is one of those «deceitful» songs where you make a chorus so catchy, it is impossible for your stadium audience not to sing it as an anthem: "all the people, so many people, they all go hand in hand through their parklife" — nice words, right? But there is not-so-deeply-hidden contempt here, in that chorus, going all the way back to the jolly old tradi­tion of character assassination by Ray Davies (ʽDedicated Follower Of Fashionʼ, etc.).

This formula — a simple, effective guitar melody based on «toughly-popped» chords, spiced up with some sprinkly electronics and an imminent vocal hook in the chorus, and paired with sar­castic situation-observing lyrics — describes approximately half of the songs on the album; to the two big hit singles above add also ʽTracy Jacksʼ, ʽLondon Lovesʼ, ʽMagic Americaʼ (the latter pokes fun at Americaphilia rather than America itself), ʽJubileeʼ, and even the instrumental ʽDebt Collectorʼ, whose bourgeois-gallant waltzing gets a wholly unusual interpretation when you view it in the context of its title. In each of these songs, behind the «modern English cool» façade there is thoughtful, insightful content — and the musical arrangements are complex enough to prevent the possibility of boredom (keyboards, vocal harmonies, special effects): this is electric guitar-based pop rock, yes, but Blur sell their songs as complete multi-layered packages, not as bare-bones ideas fueled only by sheer enthusiasm and arrogance.

However, the songs that carefully lead Parklife over the threshold that separates «simply cool» records from «great» ones are those that add a slight lyrical touch — most importantly, ʽEnd Of A Centuryʼ, ʽTo The Endʼ, and ʽThis Is A Lowʼ, situated respectively near the beginning, middle, and end of the album and giving it three major «pivots» around which revolves all the snappy coolness. ʽEnd Of A Centuryʼ, in particular, is one of my absolute favorites — the greatest, pro­bably, of all of Blur's «compassionate» songs, an ode to all the bored and lonely people that once again honors the Kinks with its ʽWaterloo Sunsetʼ-ish harmonies and melancholic horn solos, and really cuts all the way down to the heart. ʽTo The Endʼ, on the contrary, dips into the influence pool of French pop (the band even involves Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab to sing in her native language), sounding not unlike something out of the soundtrack of Un homme et une femme, although still infected a bit too much with Blur's usual energy.

Finally, ʽThis Is A Lowʼ ends the album on a note that is as far removed from the opening sneer of ʽGirls And Boysʼ as possible — here, Blur plunge into full-scale psychedelic mode, yielding something deep, multi-layered, loud and screechy one moment and soothing the next moment, a song that is more Pink Floyd than Beatles or Kinks; a good example of a situation where «The British» and «The Astral» merge together in one cohesive whole, reminiscent indeed of Syd Barrett, but with its own Nineties' face.

There is no need to religiously adore Parklife or overrate it as the harbinger of the «Britpop re­volution» — at its core, it is really very unpretentious, just a humble tribute to the original Brit­pop, but paid by a bunch of really talented guys who, somehow, while essentially wishing to follow, must have found out, to their own surprise, that they were now in the lead. Which is, really, a pretty damn good situation in terms of creativity, and especially in terms of how well these records stand over time. In 1994, it was unclear whether Parklife would just represent a fad, but twenty years later, it sounds as fun and as fresh as if it were released only yesterday. In fact, I'd bet you anything that at least two or three records like Parklife were probably released yester­day (and the day before yesterday, and the day before that...), because Parklife has not lost its appeal or relevance in the least, and everything that has not lost its appeal or relevance gets cloned on a continuous basis these days, doesn't it? Major thumbs up.

Blur: Modern Life Is Rubbish

BLUR: MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH (1993)

1) For Tomorrow; 2) Advert; 3) Colin Zeal; 4) Pressure On Julian; 5) Star Shaped; 6) Blue Jeans; 7) Chemical World; 8) Sunday Sunday; 9) Oily Water; 10) Miss America; 11) Villa Rosie; 12) Coping; 13) Turn It Up; 14) Resigned; 15*) Young And Lovely; 16*) Popscene.

"He's a twentieth century boy / With his hands on the rails / Trying not to be sick again / And holding on for tomorrow". Compare this with Ray Davies' "I'm a twentieth century man, but I don't want to be here", and this makes it obvious what the big difference is between the Kinks and Blur — Ray Davies, sick of today, stares back into the past, whereas Damon Albarn, perhaps equally sick, is still determined to peek ahead into the future. Without this difference, Blur would never have become superstars in the 1990s: «anglophiles» they may be all right, yet their love-and-hate story with England is that of today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday.

Modern Life Is Rubbish came to be seen as the «true beginning» of Blur and one of the first proper «Britpop» records, although I sure as heck wish they'd at least called it «neo-Britpop» or something, because what are we going to do with the Kinks and the Small Faces otherwise? As far as the term itself is concerned, the key change would be seen as lyrical: Albarn borrows the patented Ray Davies trademark of writing small character portraits and impressions of everyday life in contemporary Great Britain, «localizing» his visions of boy-girl and protagonist-environ­ment relationships and, paradoxically, making it easier to empathize for anyone, British or non-British. But there are changes in the music, too, since the album only preserves a few scattered traces of the Madchester / baggy / shoegazing style of Leisure — as a rule, though, the band re­turns to a much more conventional pop-rock sound: traditional structures with improved produc­tion, so that the music can now appeal to their contemporaries and their parents alike.

The decision to «go quintessentially British» was brilliant: suddenly it became obvious that Blur had both the songwriting talent and a way to use it for some meaningful purpose. This is what makes ʽFor Tomorrowʼ one of the greatest songs of the decade — the combination of an unfor­gettable melodic hook, a certain nonchalant British cool, and a message with which so many people could identify: "...says modern life is rubbish, I'm holding on for tomorrow". Rummaging around in my mind right now, I cannot come up with any immediate examples of songs that would strike such a fine balance between present-day disillusionment and latter-day optimism. And that la-la-la chorus — simplistic as hell, but so invigorating, doesn't it actually make you want to get off your ass and go do something?

The only problem of Modern Life is that, at this stage, Blur are only beginning to get into that image, and they wouldn't really start to feel completely at home with it until the next album. To put it bluntly, Modern Life is just too damn long: even without any bonus tracks, it runs close to an hour, when records like these should not ever run over 45 minutes. I am almost certain that even some major fans might feel the same way — the difference being in what to cut out to re­duce the factor of occasional boredom. Personally, I would suggest ripping out the three-song streak of ʽOily Waterʼ, ʽMiss Americaʼ, and ʽVilla Rosieʼ if we had to go that way — but perhaps even better still would be to simply reduce some of the songs' running lengths. (One trace of their shoegaze legacy is that they still preserve these lengthy, tedious, «atmospheric» instrumental passages — ʽOily Waterʼ and ʽResignedʼ are the major culprits).

Once you have mentally condensed the record into less of a sprawl and more of a focused, eco­nomically painted landscape, the result commands total respect. The loud rockers with distorted guitars carry vicious fun — ʽAdvertʼ with its snappy "say something, say something else!" chorus (be sure to match the context and listen to it on headphones in the middle of an underground station, with a bunch of idiotic adverts staring you in the face from the other end of the platform); ʽChemical Worldʼ, its ironically swirling harsh riff, and anthemic chorus about "putting the holes in" that you gleefully sing along without the least understarding of what it is supposed to mean; ʽCopingʼ commits a little copyright crime by stealing the major hook from Argent's ʽHold Your Head Upʼ, but does that in good spirit — the hook was rather stern and gloomy for Argent's posi­tive message, and here Blur are using that riff for their psychotic purposes rather than cheer you up, so it's okay. Besides, who in 1993 remembered anything about Argent anyway?

Elsewhere, they go for direct imitations of the old Kinks/Small Faces style — ʽSunday Sundayʼ is essentially Ray Davies with crunchier guitars (but the same brass section), and the tender balla­dee­ring style of ʽBlue Jeansʼ, while melodically different from the usual Kinks patterns, still seems to hearken back to Ray's «child-like» musings. But just because Albarn and Coxon are both naturals, these songs never turn into copycat exercises: it's not as if Coxon spent hours and hours trying to decode the style of Dave Davies, and it's not as if Albarn mutated his voice to shift from his own natural pitch to Ray's much higher one. Maybe Ray Davies could have written the lyrics to ʽColin Zealʼ, which, after all, simply expands on the subject of ʽA Well Respected Manʼ (I am not so sure about the line "He's a modern retard, he's terminal lard", though), but he would have been more condescending and maybe even merciful to his assassinated charac­ter than these young whippersnappers. Fresh blood, you know.

Some of the expanded editions of the album add ʽPopsceneʼ as a bonus track — the band's single from March 1992 that basically announced the arrival of the «new Blur», but flopped and only came to be seen as historically significant in retrospect. I must say, though, that I have never understood what was the big deal with that song, other than it being fast and furious and a little teasing, but the chorus ("hey, hey, come out tonight, popscene, all right") is just plain stupid. In fact, I'd say there is nothing like that song on the album proper (even its tight rockers like ʽAd­vertʼ and ʽCopingʼ make more sense), and all the better for it, so there.

Ultimately, the record certainly deserves a thumbs up, but they are still educating themselves, and there is too much of an inspirational gap between ʽFor Tomorrowʼ and the rest of these songs to make it feel as smoothly accomplished as some of its follow-ups. A «stylistic leap», yes, but not nearly as much a «quantum leap in quality» in between the underrated Leisure and Modern Life Is Rubbish as people often make it out to be, I'd say. Still, the title alone is priceless, isn't it? Such a great discovery for all ages, and yet, seemingly, only been used once so far. I guess if the year 1993 had a legal representative, it'd probably sue Blur for libel. 

Blur: Leisure

BLUR: LEISURE (1991)

1) She's So High; 2) Bang; 3) Slow Down; 4) Repetition; 5) Bad Day; 6) Sing; 7) There's No Other Way; 8) Fool; 9) Come Together; 10) High Cool; 11) Birthday; 12) Wear Me Down.

Blur's debut seems to have been firmly written down in history as one of those «early disaster» type records — like David Bowie's self-titled debut, or Genesis' From Genesis To Revelation: collections of tentative writings that «show promise», but are so utterly derivative in comparison with later, more self-assured and individualistic creations, that nobody except the most forgiving or the most analytical fans should really bother.

Indeed, Leisure is quite derivative, no objections here. The young London band «Seymour», formed in the late 1980s, naturally admired the latest in hip developments — primarily the «Mad­chester» scene and the «shoegazing» movement, anything that could combine intelligence, psychedelia, and dancing (replete with funky syncopation if possible) in the same package. As of 1991, they had no serious inclination to become special flag-bearers for their home country — in fact, Leisure sounds as if all they wanted to do was to become the latest incarnation of The Stone Roses, in slightly poppier and more immediately accessible clothing. With a small pinch of My Bloody Valentine added, if possible, for extra-artsy flavor. Something like that.

Given such a setting, it is no wonder that Damon Albarn himself had more or less disowned Leisure, and most fans and critics alike consider Modern Life Is Rubbish to have been the «proper» debut for Blur. The two singles, ʽShe's So Highʼ and ʽThere's No Other Wayʼ, are often excused from this anathema, since they were recorded earlier than the album, while the album sessions were fussy, hurried, and left no time for Albarn to properly care about the lyrics. But on a grand scale, there is nothing stylistically special about these songs that separates them from the overall mood of the LP — ʽShe's So Highʼ is the accurate son of Shoegaze, ʽThere's No Other Wayʼ is the pretty daughter of Madchester, and then there's all the rest.

Nevertheless, I have always been a moderate fan of Leisure, because even with all of its «second hand» nature (and who, really, is to say that all of the ensuing «Brit-pop» was not second hand, when you have all that lengthy line of predecessors, from the Kinks to the Jam, stretched over the previous three decades?), even with all of that, the album is already doing a good job at show­casing Blur's greatest skill: pop hooks. Call me crazy, but in terms of instant memorability, I actually count more hooklines on Leisure than on The Stone Roses — that doesn't necessarily make it the greater album, but I sure wouldn't mind if Ian Brown and his lads had included at least a couple of short, tight, snappy, catchy tunes like ʽBangʼ or ʽHigh Coolʼ on that record.

Not only that, but the individual trademarks of Blur's two most prominent members are also well on display: Damon Albarn's snubby-sounding, velar-inclined Luhnduhn style vocal delivery, and guitarist Graham Coxon's penchant for playing it rough and dirty, but very precise and distinct at the same time, with a terrific balance between «tone» and «melody» that the generic alt-rocker would always topple in favor of «tone». A great example is the funk-pop riff that opens and controls the majority of ʽThere's No Other Wayʼ — just the right amount of crackly distortion to add some «masculinity», but playful and colorful on the whole. Or that song that nobody ever talks about, ʽRepetitionʼ (maybe because the song title instantaneously puts everybody off) — there's some fantastic guitar work there, even if it is, indeed, repetitive, but that wailing, strained riff that goes from a viciously sustained note to a series of desperately shortened ones, is a perfect companion for Albarn's "all things remain the same, so why try again? try, try, try again" chorus (or vice versa, if the melody was written before the lyrics).

Already ʽShe's So Highʼ shows that Blur are perfectly natural when it comes to keeping it simple and stupid — a couple distorted guitar overdubs, an echo effect on double-tracked vocals singing "she's so high, she's so high, I want to crawl all over her", and suddenly you get yourself a bona fide contemporary psychedelic classic. You don't even need that mid-section break with Beatlesy backward solos and cloud-riding harmonies — that chorus alone is worth the ride. It is a little unusual to hear Albarn so utterly «spaced out», as if he were under chemical influences when recording his part, but that is the attitude that the song needs. He's just being spaced out by this girl, you see. She's so high, he wants to crawl all over her. Let's hope it doesn't work in real life.

There is filler, sure enough. ʽSlow Downʼ, for instance, has some really boring, uninspired grunge guitar work, a song that must have taken three minutes to write. The same goes for ʽFoolʼ and ʽCome Togetherʼ which sound like raw demos for My Bloody Valentine's Loveless without any of the atmospheric arrangement components that made that record so special. But for a 50-minute record, three or four filler tunes are nothing to be afraid of. It would have been worse if the longest track on the album were also filler — however, ʽSingʼ is anything but; instead, it is a beautifully morose, hypnotic mantra, one of the most expressive songs based on a one-note pattern ever written, like a dirge for one's mind, frozen numb and incapable of activity. Maybe it's their impression of the sort of music that must be playing on constant repeat in the cerebrum of comatose patients — anyway, it's better than most shoegaze I have heard.

By the time the album winds down with ʽWear Me Downʼ, another track whose title is perfectly suited to its leaden guitar riff and «stone tired» vocals, Leisure has done a fine job introducing Blur as a band that, while not being terribly original (yet), feels perfectly at home with currently cutting-edge pop styles — their Please Please Me, if you wish, a record that nobody has any reason to be ashamed of, fully deserving an assured thumbs up. As far as I'm concerned, easily the worst thing about it is the front sleeve. If I were a paid musical critic and had to endure looking at that tacky bathing cap, I'd probably feel forced to shoot it down, too.