One piece of housecleaning before I get into this. Ive been really trying to hit one entry per day, if not here then also on the other blog. But I am moving three states away so things are probably gonna be a bit hectic for a while. I know no one cares but me, but I care. And that makes it important to me. And therefore I apologize to you in the hope that you will absolve me of my self inflicted guilt.
Speaking of my problems, do you guys have trouble getting into Blur albums?
I don’t mean that I don’t like Blur, I really do, and I’m not trying to make some joke about their new, shitty albums. I am saying that whenever I get a Burl album it really takes some effort to get into it. Once I get it, it’s great. There’s like this invisible barrier to entry that you just have to push past in order to like their music. Once you do you look back and wonder what was so difficult. 13 is moving and Parklife is unendingly fun, and you return again and again. It’s just getting to that point that is hard. Its not that the songs are bad, some stand out as fun, but something, some gear, is not yet meshing in your brain, and you have to listen a few more times to get it to gel.
I actually have two blur albums that I am working on right now: Modern Life is Rubbish and Leisure. Of the two I have listened to Leisure a lot more since I have had it for about six months now, whereas MLIR is a recent purchase, and finally completed my Blur set. I’ll be pissed if they put out another album and I have to drop more money and time on this. I kid. But seriously, Coxon? Albarn says you smell. And your recent solo work was brilliant, you don’t need that cartoon obsessed twit. Goooooood. Goooooood.
Anyway, yeah so the albums. I have had Modern Life Is Rubbish for a month or so and I have had almost no traction. Part of the problem may be the, ahem, Blur formula. I love Blur, and hate to criticize, but yeah, we get it that you are from the suburbs and it wasn’t super fun and there were problems in paradise in England. And that middle class people are boring, and overly obsessed with uninteresting minutia. Kinda a funny thing coming from a couple Colchester boys like yourselves. Another manifestation of pre-indie Strummeritis? The album painting of Blur dressed as mop-top skinheads says yes. Moving on.
The Blur Formula has a third side, which is brilliantly composed pop music, and that is certainly in abundance here. I am probably not ready to take the crown for Favorite Blur Album away from Parklife yet, but this has everything you could want in a Blur album, musically: rockin numbers, songs with deceptive cadences that stop and go a lot, even a kind of dancy tune. The vocals deliver well, with Albarn, that golden-voiced angel, composing his usual lilting harmonies which ar expertly woo-ed to by Coxon.
As usual with the band the album has a whole mess of drama in its background. It was, in many respects, the first Brit-pop album. Their first album, Leisure, is considered more of a shoue-gaze kind of record, a style that the British public was cooling on. Blur’s label, in desperation, sent them on an American tour, where the band had their face rubbed in America’s then complete obsession with grunge. Other bands might have packed it in, or at least decorously retreated back to the underground, but Albarn and Coxon are anything but decorous, and are apparently fueled by a seething cocktail of rage and more rage. Using this towering angst, the band put together an extremely happy pop album that just makes ya want to go on a picnic.
The rage really comes in with the lyrics, which are extremely sarcastic and cover everything from how dull the suburbs are to how boring the middle class is. Oh did I make that joke already? Ok. How about trouble in paradise in England? Ah ok. Hmm. The phoniness of marketers? Ok..we also have one about peeping toms. Ok, so “everything from the phoniness of marketers to complimentary portraits of peeping toms.” That’ll do.
I have to say, the album art here is some of the most finely crafted possible. Not only did the band hire good people to do the art, and hold them to a theme, they took an active hand in the layout and design. It’s such an integral part of the theming of the record that the lyrics layout, which includes chord tabulations, is discussed on the album’s Wikipedia page. I noticed this attention to detail, and the band will be rewarded in the herafter.
This is a Blur album. At this point you probably know Blur, and given the, ahem, select nature of my readership, you know I love Blur. I really do, and writing this review has actually made this album click for me. It really is an excellent album. It is also a Blur album, so if you like Blur you know what you are getting here. If you don’t know Blur this might be a good place to start, since the whole Brit Pop thing basically started here. In fact the album has been called a concept album. I would add a concept album that got lost and became a genre for a few years there. Certainly a career for the band.
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