Blur: Classic Or Dud

Yeah, a terrible shame, all the music portions are distorted, EMI really fucked it up.

surprise!

New album, The Ballad of Darren, out 21st July 2023.https://t.co/NYFL2LW7On pic.twitter.com/5uh5O5q5yl

— blur (@blurofficial) May 18, 2023

excited to hear if it's somehow even worse than the magic whip

I'm so fuckin excited

The album cover is brilliant btw

post-13 i've only paid attention to anything Albarn-related via singles (mostly gorillaz) but that coachella performance is enough to have me looking forward to this one, and maybe i should check out magic whip

the magic whip has its moments. a few.

It wouldn’t take much for this record to be better than the last one, which was stunningly … I don’t even wanna say bad, it just didn’t register with me at all.

don't believe i ever heard think tank either.

think tank is nearly as good as 13 imo. ppl who hate "jets" be quiet

(I’ll defend TT any day of the week, but acknowledge that I’m very much in the minority there.)

missed opportunity to make a concept album called Tory Cheese Twat

other post-13 albarn worth checking out: good bad queen

don't think I have ever listened to think tank all the way through, but I've listened to the magic whip at least twice. ama.

(didn't bother with think tank because I couldn't stand 'tender' and the song titles looked stupid)

Magic Whip & Think Tank are flippin great

oh tender was on 13. Well I haven't listened to that either.

Interesting to hear them wholeheartedly embrace the full-throated anthemic Britpop sound they've studiously avoided since, like 1999!

Magic Whip & Think Tank are flippin great

correct

13 is a really good album!

13 is a really good album!

correct

I mean Crazy Beat is kinda naff and the sax part of Jets is daft as a brush but otherwise it rules

Still impressed by the audacity of having Damon take over lead guitar duties and it somehow working

13 and Think Tank are phenomenal and two of my favourite albums ever.

Yeah Crazy Beat and that but even so.

think tank is uneven but one of the better blur albums. 13 is still albarn's best work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gr8Z3rUeJM

this is thankfully much better than anything on the magic whip which was dreadful. the 2012 singles were pretty good though

I'm surprised the band still generates such enthusiasm tbh. I don't mean it as backhanded snark. I have'em stuck in their 1992-2003 peak and never meet anyone in the wild who mentions the '90s stuff. Hell, last week I downloaded the 2000 comp for walking purposes and ended up skipping way too many songs ("Charmless Man," ugh). My local bookstore plays "Coffee & TV" ad infinitum in this playlist I can tell is called "Eighties/Nineties UK Indie" (Smiths, the Sundays, etc.).

The eponymous album and the slow stuff on 13 ("Caramel") are just about all I need.

Still impressed by the audacity of having Damon take over lead guitar duties and it somehow working

That might be because, CB and File on You aside, it never rocks out - no matter how abrasive Damon's guitar can occasionally get elsewhere. Alex and Dave power the record.

they were always pretty uneven really, a mostly great singles act but most of the albums are messes. 13 was just where they turned all the mess into brilliant noise. "caramel" is their best track

still kinda amazed how prolific albarn is, gorillaz just put out an album a few months ago (which i probably should get around to, the one before it was something of a return to form)

They've all been prolific this year sans Alex - this is the fourth Blur-related new album of the year.

Great news! Can't understand people hating on the Magic Whip at all.

Magic Whip just didn't have any of the playfulness or imagination of their other work. It sounded like "what people who don't really care one way or the other about Blur imagine when they think of Blur"

There are at least a dozen pages on the Hoffman board Blur featuring a certain banned member from here telling everyone else they don't like it

Magic Whip was/is good but in the light of day a lesser Blur record. No bad songs, some great ones, some okay ones. The glow of its 2015 rollout will make me think of it fondly forever though.

It had pretty much nothing which sounded like a 'proper' single like they used to do, which might have been a harder sell for some

it was just tuneless and half-baked. some terrible synth sounds too.

no proper singles yeah, but also nowhere near as compelling as the experimentation of 13 and think tank.

it was limp schlock with a very unfortunate side-order of asian exoticism. only 'go out' and the opener bang. ffs

'no bad song' my brother in britpop 'new world towers' is the second track

some okay ones

my favourite classic-Britpop-band album-release news of the day is that there's a new Electric Soft Parade ftr :D

A silver disc of their first album hangs in a pub not far from me and I cannot remember why.

I'm not sure how excited I am about this, I'm a fan and own a bunch of singles but I don't think I actually liked them that much. They're good but overrated.

i'm just pleasantly surprised that the single is decent enough

Can't help feeling a bit excited about this, but mostly I'm just hoping they keep up their post-Think Tank two-good-songs-per-decade streak, at least. Looking forward to checking out the new song later - the comments here sound promising.

'no bad song' my brother in britpop 'new world towers' is the second track

One of the best songs on the record, wtf?

this new single is absolute dreck imo, truly no songwriting detected

new ESP single otoh is how you *do* a Britpop album preview track

Magic Whip was great. This new song is great. The new album has Gourock Outdoor Pool on the cover. It's all good.

Listening to TMW now. Ahh it's so good. Actually fewer merely 'okay' songs than I'd remembered.

Magic Whip is honestly top 4 and maybe top 3 Blur for me.

Agreed for top 4, would place Think Tank just behind Parklife and MLIR

Update: just loving this new song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kTR9H-p4cA