FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
IN THIS PHOTO: Blur shot by Zanna in 1993
Part One: Blur
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I want to start a small feature…
where I select a few bands/artists and give you the lowdown on the albums and books to buy. A lot of other sites have been doing this and, rather than filling space and providing something quite generic, I want to flip some attention the way of an artist that warrants a bit more investigation; albums that sound great today and would definitely make for quality listening. To kick things off, I have chosen Blur, as they are one of my favourite bands ever, and there are a couple of albums in their cannon that maybe have not been as poured over as they should – in addition to the classic discs. Whether you are familiar with Blur or are approaching them fresh, here is where you should start/continue with one of…
BRITAIN’S greatest bands ever.
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The Four Essential Albums
Modern Life Is Rubbish
Release Date: 10th May, 1993
Labels: Food (U.K.), SBK (U.S.)
Producers: Blur/John Smith/Steve Lovell/Stephen Street
Standout Tracks: Star Shaped/Chemical World/Sunday Sunday
Buy: https://shop.blur.co.uk/uk/modern-life-is-rubbish-2cd-special-edition.html
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4filJ9pPVmAczwssCkpePe
Review:
“As a response to the dominance of grunge in the U.K. and their own decreasing profile in their homeland -- and also as a response to Suede's sudden popularity -- Blur reinvented themselves with their second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, abandoning the shoegazing and baggy influences that dominated Leisure for traditional pop. On the surface, Modern Life may appear to be an homage to the Kinks, David Bowie, the Beatles, and Syd Barrett, yet it isn't a restatement, it's a revitalization. Blur use British guitar pop from the Beatles to My Bloody Valentine as a foundation, spinning off tales of contemporary despair. If Damon Albarn weren't such a clever songwriter, both lyrically and melodically, Modern Life could have sunk under its own pretensions, and the latter half does drag slightly. However, the record teems with life, since Blur refuse to treat their classicist songs as museum pieces. Graham Coxon's guitar tears each song open, either with unpredictable melodic lines or layers of translucent, hypnotic effects, and his work creates great tension with Alex James' kinetic bass. And that provides Albarn a vibrant background for his social satires and cutting commentary. But the reason Modern Life Is Rubbish is such a dynamic record and ushered in a new era of British pop is that nearly every song is carefully constructed and boasts a killer melody, from the stately "For Tomorrow" and the punky "Advert" to the vaudeville stomp of "Sunday Sunday" and the neo-psychedelic "Chemical World." Even with its flaws, it's a record of considerable vision and excitement. [Most American versions of Modern Life Is Rubbish substitute the demo version of "Chemical World" for the studio version on the British edition. They also add the superb single "Pop Scene" before the final song, "Resigned."]” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: For Tomorrow
Parklife
Release Date: 25th April, 1994
Label: Food
Producers: Stephen Street/Stephen Hague/John Smith/Blur
Standout Tracks: Girls & Boys/Parklife/To the End
Buy: https://shop.blur.co.uk/uk/parklife-2lp-vinyl-special-edition.html
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0YS25Dr3hMtMFlVTfuvzl4
Review:
“From their beginnings, Blur have got up peoples' noses with a strike-rate that more blatantly antagonistic bands can only dream of. During baggy, when it was cool to look like Peter Beardsley's less attractive cousin, Blur were unabashed pin-ups. Later, when their contemporaries stared at their plimsolls and courted grunge attitude, they employed a brass section and looped around like space hoppers. And as we looked to Seattle for new language, Albarn name-checked Primrose Hill and sang with an accentuated Southern accent that hadn't been heard since the likes of Anthony Newley were hip.
Still Blur were accused of that most heinous of crimes - the jumping of bandwagons. Yet they re-invented themselves, it was no corporate marketing play, and what 18 months ago looked like retrograde precociousness (sticking up for Little England as US culture steamrollered into Hertfordshire) is not little short of maverick genius.
'Parklife' is 'Modern Life Is Rubbish's' older brother - bigger, bolder, narkier and funnier. Musically they're leagues better than before, the ill-formed ideas have reached fruition and lyrically Blur now find themselves at the end of an inheritance that starts with The Kinks and The Small Faces and goes through to Madness and The Jam. Not just because they are blatantly inspired by all four - the comparisons are easy to make - but because they articulate the everyday world with equal potency and humour. Where Ray Davies saw beauty in the skies over Waterloo Station, Damon Albarn sees it in the mirror ball above a Mykonos dancefloor. And while contemporaries like Pulp are drawn towards the seedy glamour of sex behind the net curtains, Blur see the mundanity and ennui of suburban living.
Although they may affect the stance of council estate lads (the sleeve artwork pictures them down the dog track) the characters knowingly portrayed in much of 'Parklife'” – NME
Choice Cut: This Is a Low
Blur
Release Date: 10th February, 1997
Label: Food
Producers: Stephen Street/Blur
Standout Tracks: Song 2/On Your Own/Death of a Party
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6Gv1zpuMsO4XfWSw22YQhP
Review:
“The Great Escape, for all of its many virtues, painted Blur into a corner and there was only one way out -- to abandon the Britpop that they had instigated by bringing the weird strands that always floated through their music to the surface. Blur may superficially appear to be a break from tradition, but it is a logical progression, highlighting the band's rich eclecticism and sense of songcraft. Certainly, they are trying for new sonic territory, bringing in shards of white noise, gurgling electronics, raw guitars, and druggy psychedelia, but these are just extensions of previously hidden elements of Blur's music. What makes it exceptional is how hard the band tries to reinvent itself within its own framework, and the level of which it succeeds. "Beetlebum" runs through the White Album in the space of five minutes; "M.O.R." reinterprets Berlin-era Bowie; "You're So Great," despite the corny title, is affecting lo-fi from Graham Coxon; "Country Sad Ballad Man" is bizarrely affecting, strangled lo-fi psychedelia; "Death of a Party" is an affecting resignation; "On Your Own" is an incredible slice of singalong pop spiked with winding, fluid guitar and synth eruptions; while "Look Inside America" cleverly subverts the traditional Blur song, complete with strings. And "Essex Dogs" is a six-minute slab of free verse and rattling guitar noise. Blur might be self-consciously eclectic, but Blur are at their best when they are trying to live up to their own pretensions, because of Damon Albarn's exceptional sense of songcraft and the band's knack for detailed arrangements that flesh out the songs to their fullest. There might be dark overtones to the record, but the band sounds positively joyous, not only in making noise but wreaking havoc with the expectations of its audience and critics” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Beetlebum
Think Tank
Release Date: 5th May, 2003
Label: Parlophone
Producers: Ben Hillier/Norman Cook/William Orbit/Blur
Standout Tracks: Out of Time/Good Song/Battery in Your Leg
Buy: https://shop.blur.co.uk/uk/think-tank-2cd-special-edition.html
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6RuHU0yzckZOsYNDcjctq8
Review:
“Almost a decade on, it's difficult to believe that Blur and Oasis were once considered rivals. Today, the two bands seem incomparable. They have nothing in common, a fact underlined by Blur's sixth album.
Think Tank provokes adjectives you are never likely hear used about Oasis: experimental, intriguing, dignified. Its sound varies continually, taking in crepuscular atmospherics, punky noise and the appealing plunk of unfamiliar world- music instruments.
What should in theory sound like a random selection of Damon Albarn's dilettantish enthusiasms is held together by largely superb songwriting: doleful and world-weary on single Out of Time, gently love-struck on opener Ambulance.
Despite his early departure from the project, even Graham Coxon emerges looking good: his solitary contribution, Battery in Your Leg, is a triumph of soaring guitar racket and poignant lyrics. Only the cluttered-sounding collaborations with Fatboy Slim fall short of their ambition - a disappointment, but not a crime on an album informed by a winningly adventurous spirit” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Caravan
The Underrated Gem
13
Release Date: 15th March, 1999
Labels: Food, Parlophone
Producers: William Orbit/Blur
Standout Tracks: Coffee & TV/Mellow Song/No Distance Left to Run
Buy: https://shop.blur.co.uk/uk/13-2lp-vinyl-special-edition.html
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5YuZ4DjvtZBywtIbHIqtGJ
Review:
“…Blur, on the other hand, have no such innate talents. Notoriously chameleonlike, the band has always been more interested in complex conceits than self-examination, adopting Anglo poses that referenced everyone from the Kinks to Madness. But their fifth album, 1997’s Blur, was a major departure, a supposed homage to American indie bands like Pavement and Tortoise, and it generated their biggest U.S. hit, ”Song #2.”
The influence of those groups is much stronger on the sprawling 13. Written following singer Damon Albarn’s split with his girlfriend of eight years (Elastica’s Justine Frischmann), the album has been billed as a tortured post-breakup meditation, and at least in one respect that rings true: It’s extremely messy. Kicking off with the gentle, gospel-tinged single ”Tender,” the album lurches between gritty guitar workouts (”Bugman,” ”B.L.U.R.E.M.I”), druggy dub experiments (”Battle,” ”Mellow Song”), and trembling laments (”1992,” ”No Distance Left to Run”). Orbit’s masterfully sludgy production adds a layer of grime to even the poppiest songs, and his cut-and-paste edits and swooshing studio flourishes create a sense of dizzy late-night anguish throughout.
Albarn’s self-pitying soul-baring isn’t always convincing (”Come on, come on, come on/Get through it/Come on, come on, come on/Love’s the greatest thing that we have”), but musically the album is perfectly evocative of some of life’s lowest moments. While I’ll take Reservation‘s romanticized melancholia over 13‘s harsh realism, each is undeniably powerful in its own way” – Entertainment Weekly
Choice Cut: Tender
The Latest/Final Album
The Magic Whip
Release Date: 27th April, 2015
Labels: Parlophone, Warner Bros.
Producers: Stephen Street/Graham Coxon/Damon Albarn
Standout Tracks: Go Out/There Are Too Many of Us/Ong Ong
Buy: https://shop.blur.co.uk/uk/the-magic-whip-double-vinyl-album.html
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0nSzBICzQHea8grwfqa5Gb
Review:
“But a crowd-pleasing recreation of past glories a la Suede’s 2013 comeback ‘Bloodsports’ just wouldn’t be Blur. The fascination of ‘The Magic Whip’ is in how a reanimated Blur imagine they’d have developed by 2015, and how the Hong Kong environment fed into that. ‘I Broadcast’ comes on like a Far Eastern arcade machine playing ‘Popscene’. ‘New World Towers’ is a full-band sister-piece to Damon’s ‘Everyday Robots’, Alex’s bass and Graham’s acoustic set to hazy electronics, sonorous thuds and laptop textures. ‘Ice Cream Man’ washes a classic Blur character study with the bleeps, clicks and whirrs of the modern age trying to sound like 1995’s idea of 2015.
Damon’s current obsession with technological dislocation combines with the clinical confusion of Hong Kong to give stretches of the album a lingering, sombre tone where Blur albums of old might have thrown in a wild-assed ‘Bugman’ or ‘Song 2’. The military strings of ‘There Are Too Many Of Us’ reflect the brooding threat of the population explosion that struck Damon in China and post-apocalyptic images of a desert engulfing Hyde Park on death-ray doom tune ‘Thought I Was A Spaceman’ speak of a soul-sapped humankind sleepwalking into oblivion. Blur have always striven to make their albums era-defining snapshots of life and culture, and ‘The Magic Whip’’s portrait, in contrast with its garish artwork, is often a mournful monochrome.
But you only need listen to the stunning ‘Pyongyang’, the album’s lustrous ‘This Is A Low’ named after the downtrodden North Korean capital, to see how Blur still find hope and beauty in desolation. This is a reunited band making music to rival their very best. There’s airmiles aplenty in these Essex Dogs yet” – NME
Choice Cut: Lonesome Street
The Blur Book
Blur: 3862 Days: The Official History
Author: Stuart Maconie
Publication Date: 16th July 1999
Publisher: Virgin Books
Synopsis:
“It's been 3862 Days since Blur formed as seymour, a shambolic, alcoholic art rock four piece
from England's sleepy violent, marginal dormitory towns. In the course of those 3862 daysthey've fought with themselves and others, been to the very brink of self-destruction and stillfound time to become the most significant and important British band of the nineties. 3862 Days is a story that encompasses sex, art, politics, football, drugs, drink, aviation, evenspace travel, based on hours of exclusive interviews told to the writer that knows them bestand has travelled, celebrated and commiserated with them since the early days of pub gigsand on-stage anarchy. It's 3862 days in the life of a very British phenomenon whose musichas soundtracked the last years of the century. It's the story of Blur. 3862 Days: The official History of Blur is the candid story of four very different personalities -Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree; rakes, wits, boffins, actors,lads, hearthrobs, philosophers, artists and ultra-cool nerds, often simultaneously - and howthis intense, hedonistic quartet became superstars. It;s the story of bitter rows with recordcompanies, farcical feuds with oasis, fist fights with each other, struggles with the bottle,fall-outs with Tony Blair, romances foundering in full public gaze and their complicatedlove-hate relationship with America. It's the decade-long odyssey that led to the making of13, their most complex and rewarding album yet” - Blur.org.uk
Buy (used): https://www.amazon.co.uk/3862-Days-Official-History-Blur/dp/075350287