Blur: Classic Or Dud

Despite reservations, it's good to have a new record.

I was caught up in a personal wave of Blur nostalgia by this record and regretting that I didn't get it together to see them at the recent Wembley shows. But seeing the twitter clips of audience interaction bit for Girls and Boys turned me right off the idea.

I agree that this album is a big grower. Several of the songs I wrote off before have started to poke their leaves out the ground. It's really hard to separate something like this from their previous work though.

"Blur Night" on BBC 2 next Saturday, including archive performances, and a new concert for a small audience recorded earlier this month - for those who aren't fully sated by the new record.

Jeez that encore is a hardcore fan's dream:
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/blur/2023/eventim-apollo-london-england-7ba48ea4.html

Wow. Mr Briggs? I don't even remember how that one goes and I'm a fan fan

I should really go listen to those Leisure B-sides again

Theme From An Imaginary Film has got to be up there with the least expected songs they could play. Would have freaked out had I managed to be there

Oh my god that encore

BRIGGS, CLOVER, THEME

That's great. Its always a thrill to see some of the old b-sides get some love. Young & Lovely and Luminous have been played in some recent sets too.

I really like Theme. A friend and I were talking about our top three Blur songs, and while I couldn't seriously include it, it would certainly be an honourable mention.

I saw them play both Luminous and Young & Lovely across two gigs last month, but my god...Theme

reading the last few posts i was surprised to find Theme From Retro is such a fan favorite. wtf is Theme From An Imaginary Film??

i'm not into this. prefer Theme From Retro

Here's Theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTc3MSWuylk

I missed Theme From Retro chat, feel compelled to say I love it. The last embers of their Cardiacs influence caught in a celestial dub smog. :)

xo found it but thank you

so, much as Damon grates, i love Graham's playing on the mk1 albums, especially the s/t. it's so awkwardly fussy and pushes hard against the grain of the songs.

feel like he caught some flack for toning it down on his solo stuff. 'what happened to all the wacky noises?' the guitar is a lot less interesting there, i guess cause it's hard to sabotage your own songs like that.

on the new stuff i've heard he's sort of doing the wobbly Graham sounds, but his parts sit quite comfortably inside the track. the textural element isn't disruptive, seems it's there just to refer back to their previous work? and Damon is still annoying.

i'm out.

My email address is imaginary film 😍 A friend’s dad brought me the Special Collectors Edition back in the late 90s from a trip to Japan.. incredibly jealous to be stuck in Canada without any chance of these shows. B-sides and early albums ftw though.

Some thoughts about the album tracks which I wrote the other day for something else (albeit remixed):

I'm really falling for The Ballad. It's the backing vocals, they've crept up on me. From the title alone I half-harboured a desire for it to be as grandiose as Roy Wood's The Song, but it has its own humble stateliness. It reminds me of the Divine Comedy's Regeneration a bit. Something about the watery Wichita Lineman-ish guitars that come in, and how they slide off the upwards jets of strings. Like smears of sunlight peering through thin blinds.

Maybe modern production aside (stuffy, everything-close-mic'd), Barbaric is real good. Again, the carful layering of vocals is really starting to make itself known. Speaking of the modern production, I'm not generally a fan of that drum sound. The Tame Impala/Yves Tumor sound as I used to call it before I suddenly realised it was suddenly on everything. But it can work for me in the right contexts. It means that, come Russian Strings, I'm actually being reminded of.. the last couple Paul Weller albums? Definitely, I think. This is On Sunset-ish.

There isn't much Blur precedent for The Everglades. Lovely baroque flourishes coming from those acoustic arpeggios. The intro and mid-section of Goodbye Albert remind me, strangely enough, of the Dave ident music but submerged in haze with maybe a slight Yuko & Hiro flavour. Does that surface through the flanging? Perhaps. But the fatalistic use of More Specials muzak on The Great Escape is sort of mirrored here, as it was To Binge. Yet like To Binge, i'm not haring any fatalism. It's beautiful, resolution decidedly not smothered out. This is going to be a favourite and it's mostly down to Graham.

Far Away Island is interesting to me. Past the red herring organ at the start, there's instantly classy Blur stylings in there, concealed a little. That's to say I immediately feel something on that chord change at 0:24, 0:39 etc. (He Thought of Cars!) And the way the last line in a verse arrives at the start of where the next one should begin. Just reminds me why I love this band, in a rather sideways way. This is a sweet waltz, perhaps their finest - a happy ending for the Debt Collector and Ernold Same.

Avalon is a shapeshifter. It's built on blasts of horn but they sound so ethereal. This is, in its own subtle way, celestial stuff. Familiar news from another star. And then there is The Heights. Dave Rowntree... It's not even necessarily that this is a clear highlight for him, its just that he's really up in the mix and sounds great. Has he ever sounded so metallic? Note that as it rises into white static, swoonsome harmonic interference is still audible behind it. Drone and harmony - shoegaze - the deep fried chime that begins Leisure. It feels like an appropriate way to end.

Except it isn't, really. The Rabbi should maybe have found a way into the body. But so should The Swan, for its rhythmic deviation if nothing else - a slow-mo breakbeat painted in with brushstrokes. I'm gonna need to give these ones a bit more time than the others.

I think I know all the words to Mr Briggs still. That guitar sound! A delight xp

I’ve just sung it a bit more in my head and realized I was singing Uncle Love actually. Had to look up the lyrics to Mr Briggs and now I remember- makes more sense with the new album tbh

listening to think tank again and it's a little inconsistent but most of it is some of the best music albarn had ever made, i wish he'd made more like it

Think Tank is probably one of the most uneven albums I have in my collection. Totally agree that there's some of the best music of his career on there. It's hard to imagine Damon coming up with something as magical as Ambulance, Out Of Time, Sweet Song or Battery In Your Leg now. It's frustrating such gorgeous songs sit aside Crazy Beat, Jets and We've Got A File On You.

here to once again be the only person saying that "jets" rules

Interesting to frame this new album against The Great Escape, whereas at first I was comparing it to 13, Think Tank and Magic Whip. There are definitely similarities (and not just the album cover, which I think of as also being a reference to David Hockney)

kitchen person OTM. I feel the same way about 13 too.

I don't mind "Crazy Beat," to be honest...

All of Think Tank rules - except Crazy Beat, which partly rules

I've said it before but I don't at all mind the basic sound of it, and Fatboy's Kalifornia duck voice. Where it really slips are the yeah yeah yeah yuh YEAHs and the lyrics (esp second verse).

Nothing wrong with Jets. Damon folding in his jamming with Alex and Dave from the s/t and 13 with learned experiences with Dan the Automator and cast. The exact roomy breather that benefits being track 11. But groove is still not quite enough so in comes Mike Smith to scribble on it and it's the right accent colour.

listening to think tank again and it's a little inconsistent but most of it is some of the best music albarn had ever made, i wish he'd made more like it

If Crazy Beat weren't on Think Tank, I think that album would have an entirely different reputation. Maybe Albarn's most ethereally gorgeous album, for the most part?

and it's funky too

sit aside Crazy Beat, Jets and We've Got A File On You.

Count me in the "Think Tank rules" camp.

Jets is fantastic until that sax solo stinks it up. Other than that and Crazy Beat, Think Tank is absolutely top notch

I’m legit amazed by how much the new one has grown on me. Top 3 Blur record?

oh my godddd I'm gonna have to listen to this and take some names aren't I

Interesting to frame this new album against The Great Escape,

there's absolutely no question that it's better than the great escape

I haven't heard the new one yet, but The Great Escape is a good, not bad album.

This one has got a similar mood. It's Great Escape meets 13

I like it but it’s a Damon album backed by Blur

I was thinking this, but then I started wondering how that might not apply to all Blur albums

Only just learnt that Sweet Song is about Graham, and in that context it's rocketed into my favourite Blur songs

it’s a Damon album backed by Blur with a bit of fan service thrown in…and that’s ok.

would be my hot take if I were reviewing.

There 's a good bit in the Apple Music interview for the album, where Alex and Damon are saying how the new record came together so easily, the old magic was there as soon as they started to play etc. It's undercut by Graham quietly saying "I've never done so many guitar takes for an album". He looks so vulnerable, you almost wonder if he's being exploited for forced labour.

Interesting to frame this new album against The Great Escape,

there's absolutely no question that it's better than the great escape

― ufo

There's nothing on here as good as The Universal, Best Days, He Thought Of Cars, Entertain Me or Yuko & Hiro. At the same time there's probably nothing as bad as Top Man or Mr Robinson's Quango.

Somehow The Great Escape is still one of the Blur albums I go back to the most.

Was thinking about Topman recently - could potentially have been great had they increased the BPM and lost that annoying low vocal that grates from the start

OK let's do this now

weakest opening track of their career. off to a good start here lads

Jesus, that encore. That's only their second time playing "Clover Over Dover" live, ever! Possibly my favorite Blur song (it was my #1 in the Blur tracks poll) -- I would've flipped out. Gotta shout out "All Your Life" too. That's a top-tier b-side.

Not really into Ballad of Darren. Aside from "St. Charles Square" (which rules), the best moments just remind me of recent Arctic Monkeys stuff. I'm thinking, like, "So turn the music up / I'm hitting the hard stuff" from "Russian Strings," and a few other bits. Which just makes me want to listen to the last couple Arctic Monkeys albums instead. Whereas "St. Charles Square" doesn't necessarily make me want to listen to Scary Monsters, it just makes me wish there were more songs like it on the album.

Goodbye Albert is the closest thing to a good song so far imo, this has been sentimental energyless dreck

there was something muted about St Charles Square, it never took off for me