Blur: Classic Or Dud

Should have been a single instead of the dreadful "Song 2" I'd rather say. "Look Inside America" is better anyway though (in spite of awful and untrue lyrics)

Why does everybody hate Damon Albarn?

(Besides, aren't there reasons enough posted on this thread?)

-- Mr. Snrub (mistersnru...), September 16th, 2006.
Two words: Mali Music

It can be, I've never heard it, but Albarn's struggling to atone for being the flagship of a movement considered 'racist' in the past is so evident. He's still a good songwriter though, and as I liked 'Demon Days', I would rather like him to use his traditional songwriting skills.

WHEN WILL IT END? I WILL FIST FIGHT EVERYONE IN THIS BAND AND EVERY ONE OF THEIR FANS. HAS THE NEW ALBUM FALLEN THROUGH YET? I WILL FUCKING FIGHT YOU.

I am amazed Leisure has been mentioned only three times. It hasn't aged well but I remember listening to "There's no other way" for the first time and thinking it was amazing and really exciting? I mean, who sounded like Blur whan Leisure came out?
For me it's Blur before Parklife = classic. Dud after that.

"There's No Other Way" will always be a party anthem, and "Sing" will alway be beautiful. But Leisure isn't an album in the way Parklife is an album. It's a foetal, baggy Blur. It's a band who are quite obviously influenced by the Mondays, the Roses and the Charlies. Arguably, every album is informed by some kind of zeitgeist, but then you could counter the argument by saying that Blur were actually riding the wave, not chasing it.

Andi, chill out.

Oh totally, anyone who understands Blur understands that the first album was foetal, embryonic. Even Damon said he was embarrassed by the lyrics on that later on. If you choose that as your fave Blur, you might as well take it and refuse to own the rest of their career.

Which is perfectly fine.

I heard "There's No Other Way" in early '92 and thought, "This is my favorite baggy anthem."

If those two Kaiser Chiefs albums were Blur albums, I would have ranked them as their fourth and fifth best albums, behind "The Great Escape", "Parklife" and "Modern Life Is Rubbish", but ahead of the rest.

13 RULES

"who sounded like Blur whan Leisure came out?"

LOTS OF BRITISH INDIE BANDS IN 1989-91

...like the Sandkings, Cud and even the Charlatans at the time.

THIS IS THE SOUND OF RADIOHEAD BEING BEATEN AT A GAME THEY WEREN'T EV...oh fuck it, i'm drunk

I would say no one sounded quite like Blur in 1991, as Blur were sort of trying out stuff in the middle ground between My Bloody Valentine/Slowdive/Ride/Jesus & Mary Chain on one side and Happy Mondays/Stone Roses/Charlatans on the other one. The best stuff usually leant towards the latter, with snippets of what was to become their mid 90s style thrown into songs like "Bang!" (easily the best song on that album)

Blur didn't sound anything like MBV/Ride etc. in 1991. They might well have liked that stuff and danced around with various people from that 'scene' at Syndrome, but they weren't making that kind of music themselves. They didn't sound anything like the Stone Roses or Happy Mondays either (and those two groups didn't sound anything like each other), but they did fit in to that 'baggy'/Madchester set of groups of that time who were riding in the wake of those two (Inspiral Carpets, The Charlatans, Northside...).

I saw Blur on the Rollercoaster tour in 1992. They were bottom of the bill with Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus & Mary Chain. At the time, everyone thought 'what the fuck are they doing on this bill?' because they were just seen as an indie-pop group (well, worse than that, an indie-pop group who had had their fifteen minutes of fame a year ago and were going nowhere while the world turned to grunge). The nearest Blur came to that kind of 'shoegazing' sound would be Oily Water on Modern Life Is Rubbish, but they didn't sound like that on Leisure.

I dunno; "She's So High" has touches of shoegaze, perhaps the more 'rocky', trad-psych end (think 'Falling Down' by Chapterhouse, which amusingly enough Blur were later to kinda rip off...10 points for whoever can tell me what with), but the layering of guitars and wordless yodels in the middle-eight is straight out of the shoegazing textebook if you ask me. And that's before I get onto the backwards bit...

Anyway, Blur invented Shoegaze 2.0 with '1992'.

Agree about "She's So High" and also some of the lesser known tracks on the album. Not so much in song structure as in production.

"Popscene" was kind of shoegazing-influenced too. Then, on "Modern Life Is Rubbish" they discovered Kinks and XTC.

"Popscene" was kind of shoegazing-influenced too.

the hell, boy.

they discovered XTC and then told him to fuck off

Nasty, Brutish and Short is right to point to "Oily Water" as an example of Blur's better, shoegazer side in those days. But if read into the band's history (esp. helpful was an article Select magazine did in '95 imitating the Revolution in the Head book on the Beatles - i.e, track-by-track) there was an album they mostly had completed in '92 which was rejected by Food and consisted mostly of their more experimental stuff. "Pressure on Julian" is other obvious example, but there's a few other B-sides to point to.

'13' - if you take out the relatively simple songs, "Tender," "Coffee and TV," "BLUREMI," and "No Distance Left to Run" - would be a quite coherent, totally freaked-out electronic-pop record that makes a lot of the comparable stuff of the time seem like the trite young-yuppie BS it was.

I can't seem to decide if they really sounded like other bands of the time when they released their first album Leisure or not. I'm leaning only slightly towards not. At the very least it was clear upon hearing their first 12" that at least they were talented, which was not exactly always the case with these Brit indie bands of the time. As ludicrous as it is to say Popscene was inspired by shoegazing, I do think it's true She's So High was.

Also, people who don't like 13 can't be my friend. Sorry.

'13' - if you take out the relatively simple songs, "Tender," "Coffee and TV," "BLUREMI," and "No Distance Left to Run" - would be a quite coherent, totally freaked-out electronic-pop record that makes a lot of the comparable stuff of the time seem like the trite young-yuppie BS it was.

Sounds more industrial than electronic to me.

'Trimm Trabb' is actually a cover of a little-known KMFDM b-side

graham's guitar is the one redeeming feature of 'leisure' and the one distinctive thing about 'there's no other way'.

if that's shogazey or late 80s US indie-y, i don't know.

"She's So High" has touches of shoegaze, perhaps the more 'rocky', trad-psych end (think 'Falling Down' by Chapterhouse, which amusingly enough Blur were later to kinda rip off...10 points for whoever can tell me what with), but the layering of guitars and wordless yodels in the middle-eight is straight out of the shoegazing textebook if you ask me. And that's before I get onto the backwards bit...

The thing is, when 'She's So High' came out (in about Sept 90 IIRC) there was no such thing as 'shoegazing' for Blur to have been influenced by. We'd had the early Ride EPs, some stuff by Lush, an album by the Pale Saints, and that was about it. People only started talking about some kind of scene in 1991. There hadn't been any 'wordless yodelling' at that point (Polar Bear was probably the first instance of that) or backwards guitar that I can think of. If 'She's So High' was influenced by anything it was probably the backwards Stone Roses tracks, especially 'Don't Stop'.

"Popscene" "Sing" was kind of shoegazing-influenced too.

Fixed.

xpost: Yeah, that's a great shout. I think SSH is more overtly 'psychedelic' and riff-loaded than Don't Stop, which strikes me as being more of a blissful, jam-based loop, but I can see where the comparison comes from. Both are excellent songs. Actually, Second Coming's increased reliance on Squire's psychedelic guitar licks may have been a response to Coxon's technicolour displays of aptitude, but that's only wild conjecture for now.

Trimm Trabb' is actually a cover of a little-known KMFDM b-side

Enter Tarantino film mode:

Puts gun to your head:

"Name it. Name the KMFDM b-side. NOW."

The thing is, when 'She's So High' came out (in about Sept 90 IIRC) there was no such thing as 'shoegazing' for Blur to have been influenced by.

Holy shit! Dude is right!