Blur: Classic Or Dud

As for me, a benighted American youth with almost no knowledge of British pop culture beyond a typical obsession with Black Adder, Red Dwarf and Monty Python -- I really like Blur. Their songs sound good to me. I like their (metaphorical) love affair with Syd Barrett, with Pink Floyd or solo. I think all their albums, except for the first (which I've not heard) are quite good, verging on great. "Tender," "It Could Be You," and "Coffee & TV" are particularly sublime, in my estimation.

BTW, what's "pomo" or "po-mo" ?

apart from that: the debut is dog-food, the self-titled fifth is patchy, but with some good tunes. 13 was spoiled by orbit's over-elaborate production. the new one is a step back in the right direction, but not back to their best.

no i haven't just been listening to crap, thanks snarkers.

("13" >>>>>>>>>>>>> "Kid A", obv.)

i wish mr coxon would get back to some of the guitar work he was up to at that point...

Blur are probably the most consistent guitar band of the last decade (or fifteen years, whatever).

in my high school anglophile days I would've said classic without hesitation. now? well, more on the C than the D side. at least the good tunes still slay most of the other britpop awfulness.

1. Parklife
2. Modern Life Is Rubbish
3. The Great Escape
4. Blur
5. 13
6. Leisure
...
Think Tank

No, I won't.

Hey Wogan Lenin, name one time Blur did Bugman "already, but better about a million times before"

Thanks.

For kind of obvious reasons, this album pairs nicely (shuffled or played back-to-back) with M's Ray of Light.

Movin On, No Monsters In Me, Come Together, Song 2, Coping, London Loves, Globe Alone, Chinese Bombs...

Actually, I'm listening to it again and it's a bit better than I remembered it. I always filed it under "token Blur-go-noisey" track. BLUREMI is the worst (x) offender though.

Classic of course. My opinion on their albums is that they're all roughly the same quality(except Leisure, which is shit apart from 2 songs). They've never made a perfect 5 star masterpiece, and the fact that they don't seem to be trying for it is a huge part of the appeal to me. It's like they approached every record like it was their White Album.

Here is as good a place as any to post this. Alex on the new album:

I haven't seen any of Blur very much this year. I did run into Damon on
the Portobello Road last month. He was doing wheelies on his BMX. Graham
I bumped into in The Groucho Club the month before, with his new gang. He
has motorbikes now. He used to like skateboards. He didn't turn up to the
studio this week, despite telling the Rabbi he would. Dave, who is an
aeroplane man, I've seen once this year, at Buckingham Palace. Times have
changed. Dave got the Rabbi involved to smooth things out with Graham and
the three of us. Lawyers had tried, but they are the worst people to
resolve arguments. The Rabbi got us all together and found the love in
the room. He was immense. He just wanted us to be friends again. It
nearly happened, but I think this record is going to be just the three of
us. It's a shame. I'd like to show Graham my tractor.

We'd had a couple of jams over the summer in a rehearsal joint called The
Premises on the Hackney Road. We used to go there, all together by bus,
before we had a record deal. There's an agreeable whiff of big-beard jazz
and 'JCB Song' about The Premises. It's oddball muso heaven. The café has
all the clients' press photos on the walls, and no one has drawn funny
beards on them. The menu has gone caffè latte-pain au chocolat since the
80s, and no longer features eggy specials. We used to like those. I think
Dave may have been briefly involved with the eggy-specials lady, but
she's long gone.

The management were keen for us to use their new, big, posh flagship
studio. They said we wouldn't have to pay for it. We wanted to be in one
of the little cells, like before, though. We rocked our socks off and
recorded everything on a cassette through one microphone. 'Cassette' is
practically a swearword these days. Never say 'cassette' to a sound
engineer. They can't handle it. I'm not sure where we're heading with
digital clarity and bit resolution. The nastiness of cheap, loud pop
music is often part of its appeal. Safe to say, the music of the
revolution will not be in 5.1 digital surround sound. In Studio 2, the
leads were noisy, the drum kit was junk, the vocals were going through a
nasty guitar amp, and the bass and guitar were turned up to 10. Producers
aren't comfortable with things on 10. They like eight.

Anyway, it was all wrong, except that when we listened to the tapes last
week, it sounded brilliant. We tried re-recording the first track with
posh mics, preamps and vintage compressors, but it sounded a bit polite
compared with the 50 quid's worth of gear in Hackney. What the hell?
We're going to be working with the Hackney Vibe. It rocks!

I guess we're back in business. The Foo Fighters are going to wet their
pants when they hear this stuff, and they've just built a huge studio.
But everyone's buying old gear now " new's seen as a bit semi-pro. I
think crap equipment could become fashionable next. Thing is, if you've
got a good tune, you can whistle it in the bath and it'll catch on.

I still like the odd track on their albums. For instance, I really liked "Coffee And TV". None of them ones on "Think Tank" stick out in particular, on the other hand, the worst tracks aren't as awful as the worst ones on "13" and even "Blur".

don't worry imago we were planning to erect a statue of you itt. i have the top ascii artists in the country working on it as we speak.

I hope the names of every Blur album actual sentient humans posting itt think this new one is better than are incorporated into said ascii statue

the great escape has a few great highlights but is mostly them running out of steam & at their most annoying, so i never want to listen to it

It’s one of the most depressing albums I’ve ever heard, can’t say I ever really enjoyed listening to it but that has nothing to do with its quality.

(the great escape)

Deflatormouse OTM about TOPMAN. It is absolutely that album's "eye of the duck"

The Great Escape always reminded me of something like Seven & the Ragged Tiger. Eye of the storm kind of records.
Very confident, but with more than a touch of hysteria beneath the surface, production tarted up to make up for the dip in song quality.
Overcooked... and interesting on occasion.

i like this album a lot! it's made me go back and listen to all of Blur's catalogue, which TBH I was not overly familiar with outside of the debut, s/t, and 13.

https://tapenotes.co.uk/project/tn119-blur-james-ford

^ Podcast about the making of the new rekkid.

i love the great escape :)

but i am a miserable person

blur discog run revealed to me yet again that i only really love s/t, 13, and think tank, but i do have some nostalgic affection for great escape bc it was my first blur record, also any album with “the universal” + a bunch of garbage would be significant, and it’s more than that

I'm in the same boat, Blur up to TGE is a little repertory, a little camp, a little cheeky. And then Graeme decided he'd like to be in Pavement and so the albums became chaotic, dissonant and melancholy in response, which is much more interesting for me, and makes the pop jewels shine brighter.
I'm loving The Ballad of Darren, those folks calling it "subdued" need their heads read. "Barbaric" is one of those chord progressions which feel timeless, as if written in the fabric of music.

Thanks for the podcast link - really enjoyed it. The amount of media work that the band has done to promote this record is phenomenal.

“ And then Graeme decided he'd like to be in Pavement and so the albums became chaotic, dissonant and melancholy in response, which is much more interesting for me, and makes the pop jewels shine brighter.”

This is when I started to care about Blur

After being initially nonplussed by it, Darren is now comfortably slotting into my #3 Blur spot behind s/t and 13. How many comeback records are as good as this?

Spotify Wrapped just reminded me that Blur released an album this year lol. It would be interesting to see how listening figures went for this because I must have played it so much in the week it came out that it pushed Blur into my top 2 most played artists, only to never be played again

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/blur-add-ca-headlining-show-with-jockstrap-ahead-of-coachella/

I might have to go to this.

My wife was looking at it…

I saw Blur with Pulp and they both were so good live, the 90s ruled.

Ugh, so jealous. One of my biggest regrets was missing out on a ticket to perhaps my best chance to see Blur. They did a one-off show at the relatively intimate Brooklyn Bowl, which was a 15 minute walk from my apartment. ARRRRGH.

I forgot tickets went on sale today, I checked in two hours later and it was sold out.

My wife got two pit tix. She plans to take our son, for his first concert experience…

The show more or less sold out in minutes. Pit tickets were priced at $125 plus fees but quickly shot up to $400, $550, and then $600 per ticket (plus fees) via "AXS Premium" (the equivalent of Ticketmaster's Platinum). Later some single loge seats popped up for around $550 each, plus fees.

Unreal.

Wow… sounds like she lucked out

That's awesome morrisp, they should have a blast.

Watched the entire Brit awards thinking they were perfoming ;/