There's No Other Poll: Let's rank the Blur albums

The Magic Whip: as I wrote at the start of my post, I find it a very impressive comeback with a lot of fantastic songs. New World Towers and Pyonyang are my favourites here, even if the latter sounds a lot like Blur doing Elbow.

Heh, I think it sounds more like Japan than Elbow, which is a huge reason why I think it's one of the highlights of the record. 'New World Towers' is a dud, IMO, and it kills the momentum of the album being placed as the second track, too.

Trimm Trabb reminded me too much of the Shake n' Vac advert.

Which bit!?!

Struggling to do this. I've re-listened to everything and I don't really know. How do you judge an album: is the best one the one with the highest highs or the one which is the most consistent? I don't really listen to albums any more, I haven't done for years, so I tend to forget that each of these albums has got some rubbish on it.

I'm going to put 'Blur' and 'The Great Escape' below 'Parklife', 'Modern Life Is Rubbish', '13' and 'Think Tank', in the case of the former because once you get beyond the tracks that I really like (Beetlebum, Death of a Party, Country Sad Ballad Man) it feels a bit thrown together and half-arsed, and in the case of the latter, the highs aren't really that high.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Blur
Modern Life Is Rubbish
Parklife
The Great Escape
Think Tank
13
The Magic Whip
Leisure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebRfvAsrwxY

^ This is fantastic. The Magic Whip tracks stand nicely against the hits.

I am well aware I will be in a minority of one on this but for me it is Leisure. While its not my favourite album in the world ever there is a less of an overarching smug self awareness on this record and the songs work by themselves on a more basic level without the need for any sort of pompous attempt at le grande concept or vain clutching at addressing the zeitgeist, be voices of a generation etc, etc After Leisure, despite the odd good song, I reckon they largely disappeared up there own backsides completely.

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from with that... Leisure is riddled with flaws, but the members of Blur have never really been a particularly likeable bunch of people, so I can understand why the record that has the least amount of the band members' personalities in it would have an appeal for some people.

You know what's good off of Leisure? 'Wear Me Down'

The things about 13 that I return to:

1. The opening track *is* overly long, but that works well in context, as it's very straightforward and leads into an album that's anything but. Sort of drags out the normality of things as long as it can.
2. Immediate move into Bugman (and they hadn't done anything like that before, and no Song 2 doesn't count) is a major indication that this album is going to be a weird ride.
3. Next move to Coffee & TV which is the weirdly chorded "hit" video. Basically album is saying that even at the most accessible, we're still going to be pretty far out.
4. Swamp Song through Trimm Trabb is kind of the meat of the album, where Orbit goes bananas.
5. No Distance Left To Run is the somewhat exhausted end to all of this.

In general, album starts out like Rolling Stones, but so repetitive that you realize something is wrong/off. Then goes out into wierdsville. Then returns on the last song. Back to Rolling Stones Territory, but with some humility.

I don't consider myself a huge blur fan, but was completely blown away by 13 on release, and it still holds up. I like all their other albums to varying extents, and Parklife might in fact be the one that they always wanted to make, but 13 is the one that makes them great, after the warmup of blur. Producer (Orbit) coming off of one of the best production jobs of all time, probably deserves a lot of credit.

Hmm. I wish I could say that I was completely blown away by 13 on release but truth be told, I wasn't. I'd really enjoyed Blur and still consider it to be one of their finest ever records, however when 'Tender' came out as a single I thought it was okay, but not really anything much more than that. When I finally heard the album, I enjoyed about half of it but disliked the production and thought a lot of it sounded half-baked. I got the impression that they weren't really trying. My view of the album is a lot more favourable now, and I really love the use of stereo on the album (it's a great headphones record) but I go to it for select tracks and never listen to the whole thing. I still think that the record could have been better and the band could have been more focused - e.g. the final version of 'Battle', I truly believe that could have been much better.

I was blown away on release. In fact I was already blown away in the record shop before I bought the CD when I started listening on headphones. Isn't this a little bit their "Abbey Road"? It is such a rich album. Somehow it is a step further than just rock music. It is a trip.

That's a bit of an unfair comparison, really. Abbey Road is one of the greatest albums ever made, and 13... isn't.

13 belongs in the bracket of post-britpop millennial ambition with idk OK Computer, Six and other things I probably like too much

The Beta Band s/t

Radiator

Yeah, I'd totally put it in the same bracket as OK Computer and Six. Everything Picture, too.

The Beta Band, yes. I'd say Guerrilla rather than Radiator, though.

Everything sodding Picture XPOSTS

British guitar music was just leaping off the cliff and then The Strokes came along and ruined it: A Cockeyed Narrative I Just Came Up With

Also Travis

If I remember correctly, the NME tried to launch a movement in the late '90s called "nu-psychedelia", their theory being that popular guitar bands from the UK at the time (I'm not using the 'B' word, it's a useless word that doesn't mean anything) were moving away from making pop albums and starting to experiment with the potential of ProTools etc. in the same way that bands "went psychedelic" in 1967-1968. It didn't take off. Many of these bands couldn't or struggled to take their mainstream audience with them, for one.

In terms of American bands, I guess you could say The Flaming Lips (with Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin) were pointing towards that kind of thing, too. It's funny, because The Boo Radleys were trying their level best to make this kind of music when everyone was listening to The Great Escape and (What's The Story) Morning Glory? but kept being slagged off as being difficult.

A few new bands (The Electric Soft Parade being one) latched on nicely but yeah, it was definitely an outer-indie niche rather than a mainstream thing by 2002

Oh yeah Cmon Kids is definitely one of these

ESP frontman told me it was his favourite album ever

People often forget this, but even fucking Gomez were considered to part of that lot at one point. At the time people always focused on Ben Ottewell's voice and the bands supposed "blues" fixations, but I'd say their output from 1998-2002 mines a similar Beta Band type of territory, they just did it in a very lightweight way.

Although eventually they got bored of that approach, decided to start making straightforward pop/rock records, signed to Dave Matthews' label and decided to make a name for themselves on the American jam band scene, which is just ugh.

oh absolutely Gomez! In Our Gun maybe even qualifies

Yeah, In Our Gun is the one that sticks out in my mind the most. Maybe a few things from Liquid Skin, Machismo and that Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline compilation, too.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Well, I guess if it wasn't Blur then it had to be Modern Life is Rubbish. I wonder how many of those 18 people who voted for Parklife have actually listened to it recently.

The Magic Whip over The Great Escape is foolishness

Eight of you. My fucking god. Although presumably 7 of them are NV socks

The Magic Whip over fucking Think Tank is foolishness!

Well, those results seems about right to me! In fact, the results are pretty close to my own ranking, except for the self-titled one being lower and 13 being higher on the list (the latter of which I'd expected).

Inspired by this thread I listened to the Great Escape again last week, and I wasn't half as annoyed by it as I expected to be. I don't think it'll go up in my ranking, but I can still enjoy it. And the Universal is really really gorgeous.
'Dan Abnormal' might still be my least favourite Blur album track. And while 'Entertain Me' starts out great, I dislike the chorus.

Remembered my password too late to vote but I would've gone for 13

Eight of you. My fucking god. Although presumably 7 of them are NV socks

the good half of TGE would've been my vote if I voted, the one track I remember hearing off Magic Whip has probably stopped me from ever listening to Blur ever again

which I'm fine with

so yeah obv I wd've spammed the vote for that tragedy, If I Did It

I never realised 13 was so popular - not just on here, I've found a few other 'rank the albums' things online where it's placed 2nd to Parklife. It's an album I admire and like in parts but I can see why people love it. The little instrumental bits between songs are good.

It's interesting to see this re-evaluation of 13. When it came out it was seen as a bit of a patchy mess of a record with very little through-line. It's still not a perfect record. Lots of nothingy tracks (don't like Trailerpark or 1992 very much), but it's also got some of their best songs. In retrospect it's maybe one of their most enjoyable records.

I think Trailerpark is great, fwiw

and 1992. Where now for dog latin

Really surprised Great Escape is so low

Guess I have to give Magic Whip another shot

I still see 13 as a patchy mess, just it's a patchy mess that I like more now than I did in the late '90s. I wrote '1992' off at the time as being a lesser version of 'Sing', but now I find its use of noise compelling.

Damon should really stay the fuck away from using falsetto.

I don't know how much company I'll have, but expanded 13 also includes Music Is My Radar, which is actually one of my favorite non-album singles. Kind of Can, I guess. I was really excited when it came out, and then somewhat let down by Think Tank. The b-sides were pretty great as well.

I hated 'Music Is My Radar' when it first came out, but now I prefer it to about half of 13.

I always hated how the British Leisure didn't have "I Know," and the US one didn't have "Sing."

I bought 13 when I was 13. It was probably the turning point in my music listening habits. Prior to that purchase, my favorite album was Saturday Teenage Kick by Junkie XL. 13 will always be my favorite Blur album, warts and all.