Blur - Blur

So you can still remember the Oasis versus Blur showdown sometime during the summer of ‘95, as though it was yesterday. There was the frantic rush of hysteria and Blur ended up the winners with their song ‘Country House’ charting at number one. Now after a year and a half and Oasis having gone ballistic in terms of affecting the culture in this country and commercial sales, Blur have decided to enter back into the game at a timely moment. The Britpop monster they must confess to creating that has engulfed the whole of guitar based indie music thankfully seems to be running out of steam. Blur have returned and are prepared to define another direction in indie music that is in direct contrast to our beloved Britpop.

They have given us four albums before this one, initially a ‘baggy’ album from the early 90’s with the unforgettable There’s No Other Way. Next came Modern Life Is Rubbish with the wonders of For Tomorrow and Chemical World. Following this they turned from being middle class Essex boys to East London Cockney lads with working class roots and unleashed Parklife which brought the start of the ruin to the indie music scene.

This album is another long one and opens with the crunching fuzzy guitar of Graham Coxon on the intro to Beetlebum which is not exactly one of their finest moments but is still uncommercially catchy. Song 2 which unsurprisingly is the second song, is a dead ringer for an Elastica song and their influence is clear throughout the album (and it would be odd if it wasn’t). This song also screams The Offspring at you, which shows the first hints of how musically changed Blur have become. At the time of Parklife they detested the whole American grunge phenomena and as a result spurned the first seeds of Britpop but now it seems as though they are heading closer to it. The whole album reeks of laziness, a "slackerness" as Blur would say, but is it innocent or intentional? Those of you who are even only slightly cynical will be justifiably suspicious considering the huge turnaround in attitude and music. The majority of the songs all have a heavy feeling of lethargy that weighs you down till you reach a total state of apathy. The lyrics provide a perfect example of this such as in Death Of A Party where Damon’s tired voice croaks above the organ laden track, "Another night and I thought well well, and to another party to hang myself gently on the shelf". Blur have decided to go anti-pop in You’re So Great which comes complete with crackling in the background just like an old record and has Damon straining to sing while Graham plays an acoustic guitar in accompaniment and, at points, breaks into electric bits as though he’s trying to give the track a much needed boost. However it’s not all depression and gloom, the album also contains pure pop gems like Look Inside America (what is their fixation with the US?) and M.O.R. while Chinese Bombs is a sonic blast of noise and distortion that lasts for all of a minute and a half. Damon must have had a fetish for loudspeakers when recording this album with more than half the tracks succumbing to one, especially so on Movin’ On which kicks into a typical jump along Blur song except for Damon sounding worryingly like the lead singer from The Fall. The final track on the album is entitled Essex Dogs, so maybe they’re finally owning up to their roots, leaves you with Damon speaking through it like a grim poet, "You know you’ll get a kick in tonight, the smell of puke and piss, the smell of puke and piss."

You come away from this album feeling slightly down, and drained of any energy you may have had beforehand. Slackerdom is upon us, again.(6)

Jason