Blur: Classic Or Dud

Alex is starting to look a bit like Roger Waters, was anybody else singing 'I wanna be sedated' to the chorus of Ong Ong?

― MaresNest, Wednesday, April 15, 2015 6:14 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, but now that you've mentioned it I'm not going to be able to hear anything else!

I definitely agree with what folks have said here regarding Everyday Robots, found it to be a bit of a snoozer.

Neither of the songs are even remotely shit, perhaps not the best performance ever. But I get there's a been an I'm-first-to-declare-new-Blur-THEWORSTSHITEVER thing going on already on ILM for ages so blah

If anything, Ong Ong sounds more like Vicar In A Tutu in the melody

Well this might be radical old, but I'm avoiding hearing it before I can buy/hear the whole thing.

Not got much invested in Blur, never heard a Gorillaz or any other Albarn-y record, but this is a good album.

I don't really understand why you would think that PaulTMA? Most of us are big Blur fans and are willing this album to be great. I didn't mind Goin' Out and loved There Are Too Many Of Us but the latest three songs have been really bad. I really enjoyed Think Tank despite there being three songs I really disliked on there. There is still chance this could be a good album but I'm not as hopeful now after hearing these latest ones.

Imago is just overreacting for attention because that's his thing. We're not all doing that.

this will not be a good album. it will have 3-4 good songs max and the rest will be half-baked B-side material just like the last two albums.

Everyday Robots was a bit dreary and deadened, but not dreadful, and it's relatively engaging compared to the stuff leaked so far from this new Blur album. I still hold out hope that there will be some redeeming moments though.

I'm perhaps in a minority in thinking that The Good The Bad and The Queen album was one of the best things Albarn has ever done, and - despite it now being nearly a decade old - was confirmation of a functioning latterday mojo, so the recent greyness of his output is a disappointment.

it will have 3-4 good songs max and the rest will be half-baked B-side material just like the last two albums.

13 rules tho. you're probably referring to some other blur thing that isn't 13.

srsly

13 has some great songs but there are a good bunch (namely Swamp Song, 1992, Bugman, BLUREMI, Trailerpark) that should really should have been reserved for b-sides.

Tender can go take a hike as well. Never really loved No Distance Left To Run that much.

So yeah:

Coffee & TV
Battle
Mellow Song
Caramel
Trimm Trabb
Optigan 1

would have made a killer mini-album

I'd swap Optigan 1 for 1992 but otherwise OTM.

leave out Bugman are you nuts

the only songs that need axing are Tender and No Distance, maybe Trailerpark too

album should have been called Ex Offender (especially given its status as break-up album)

Love Tender, Love Bugman, Love BLUREMI.

:)!

right, so axe the a-sides and the album won't sound like a bunch of b-sides?

That actually does make sense, but not in the way you mean...

i.e. If they *all* sound like b-sides, the none will....

then none will, I mean.

Coffee & TV is one of their best ever singles.

leave out Bugman are you nuts

Ha, that's probably my least-favourite on the whole album. It's like the proto-'Crazy Beat'.

my days

it's one of my favourite Blur songs full stop - a runaway train of a song, sonic mayhem and impudence ramped up beyond the call of duty - nothing like Crazy Beat

Gavin, I see your point, but "BLUREMI" ticks more of those boxes. That said, I'm one of the few out there who doesn't completely hate "Crazy Beat."

'Tender' has never really been a favourite of mine, but I love 'Bugman', 'B.L.U.R.E.M.I.', 'No Distance Left To Run' and '1992'... if I had to choose songs to cut from the record, I'd probably pick 'Swamp Song' and 'Trailerpark'.

'Optigan 1' isn't great on its own, but it works in the context of the album (following 'No Distance Left To Run')

it's one of my favourite Blur songs full stop - a runaway train of a song, sonic mayhem and impudence ramped up beyond the call of duty - nothing like Crazy Beat

I think it's the combination of half-arsed riff + annoying drawled vox but yeah afriendlypioneer has a point, BLUREMI has elements of Crazy Beat too.

After listening to The Great Escape a whole lot recently, I've decided "Mr. Robinson's Quango" is their worst song. What a racket.

Blur's worst song overall surely must be one of their B-sides. They were always a frustratingly inconsistent B-sides band... some genuinely great stuff, some pissing about that either works or doesn't work, but their B-sides at their worst are quite awful.

I don't quite agree with that. Yeah, there are some really bad ones. At their worst you get four or five tracks of whimsy/experimentation/badly conceived cover/whatever. But even then there are enjoyable tracks or bits. Or even the concept is fun while the execution largely sucks. That's still better than most of their peers.

Pet Shop Boys and Erasure are two others I can think of right now with the same approach. I'm cool with it. Basically I DO actually agree with you but I don't think it's should be a criticism. The all-over-the-place nature of their b-sides and extraneous material is one of the best things about them.

13 has some great songs but there are a good bunch (namely Swamp Song, 1992, Bugman, BLUREMI, Trailerpark) that should really should have been reserved for b-sides.

unacceptable.

https://media1.giphy.com/media/QUaqJRizED5NC/200_s.gif

put me in the 'infernal rackets are great' camp - i.e. mr robinson's quango and swamp song are both wonderful

& attempting to leave 1992 off of 13 is flat-out insanity

After listening to The Great Escape a whole lot recently, I've decided "Mr. Robinson's Quango" is their worst song. What a racket.

That was my answer on the 'worst Blur song' thread and having listened to TGE start to finish for the first time in over a decade yesterday I still agree. Not so much for it's rackety qualities though, it's more that it just sounds like total self-parody. The lyrics are terrible - I've never had much of a problem with Albarn's character sketch songs but Quango comes across as a lobotomised version of something like 'Tracy Jacks'.

'Stereotypes' to me, was a song where the verses were a bunch of character studies,.and the chorus was Damon telling himself to pack in doing these sorts of songs.

He didn't do any more of them after TGE, did he?

country sad ballad man

Quango and Stereotypes both very annoying songs. And I like tGE

is that synth part after Damon sings "telly addicts" on Could Be You meant to sound like the Telly Addicts theme tune?

was the original Telly Addicts theme still in use by 1995 or had they moved on to the second version?

I just hate the way the song is called 'Mr Robinson's Quango' and it starts 'Oh Mr Robinson..../And his quango'... I mean.

country sad ballad man

― imago, Friday, April 17, 2015 9:26 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wouldn't call this a Barrett-esque character study really? tGE had too many of them - Ernold Same, Quango, Charmless Man, Stereotypes etc. etc. etc. etc. So many of them really. Thank christ he stopped writing those. CSBM is written in first person, less scathing more self-deprecating maybe?

mr robinson's quango is great, all sandwiched in between the two most beloved songs on the album being obnoxious

Mr Robinson's Quango - like most of the album - has terrible lyrics/singing but brilliant playing/production/arrangement. If you can manage to ignore or just tolerate Damon, the Great Escape is pure pleasure all the way through.

Maybe...but that is still the worst song on the album.

EK OTM

Yeah, it's a very good album, I'd have it as their third best behind 13 and MLIR

For me it's:
Parklife > MLIR = BLUR > Great Escape > Leisure > Think Tank

Parklife has become very underrated in recent years, possibly because it's cooler to hold up MLIR as the go-to fan favourite, but I find it more consistent in its vision than MLIR which has a few hotch-potch moments.

Heh, I'd go the other way - I like all of MLIR (even Turn it Up) whereas I could do without London Loves, Magic America and the title track off Parklife.

MLIR > Parklife > Blur > Think Tank > TGE > 13 > Leisure

Great Escape is such a frustrating album e.g. Charmless Man which has a great intro/bridge (one of Graham's best guitar lines there) matched to a massively irritating chorus (the verses aren't too great either).

On Parklife, I find the run of songs between To The End and This is a Low rather middling. If you removed then, the album could have been a kind of Britpop Pink Moon, I think.