Blur: Classic Or Dud

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

comfortably slotting alongside the magic whip in their bottom two albums, not that it's particularly close

the bridges of she's so high and slow down alone would put leisure above their combined virtues, the others absolutely no contest

i mean leisure is pretty good, has loads of cool sounds and good songs, unlike this nonsense

ooh it got noisy for no reason! really earned that noise! really built up to it! just like that battle-mellow song-trailerpark-caramel-trimm trabb suite that culminates finally in two colossal and contrasting outpourings of musical catharsis, except without literally any of the music

i am the splash of cold water to the face that this thread hardly deserves

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turrican_II:_The_Final_Fight

lol, turrican probably loves this album

At the same time there's probably nothing as bad as Top Man or Mr Robinson's Quango.

you know, Topman is the most TGE thing on TGE. it's like the sickly artifice underpinning the whole album extracted and enlarged under a microscope. they're not the highlights but if you take away those songs it starts to look a little more like "Parklife Part 2". whereas if you minus The Universal or He Thought of Cars it still has an identity.

idk the idea that albums would be better resequenced without the stage-setter tracks is all too prevalent on this board.

galaxy brain here, threatening to undermine all my good work being right about blur above: mr robinson's quango is undroppable from tge

i mean Blur's albums are mostly uneven and this is maybe the worst thread for making this case since e.g. Parklife prob *would* be better if you cut at least a third of the songs.

that this thread hardly deserves

agreed

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 ;/

"So, in the spirit of clarity and truth. This is probably our last gig. And obviously the last time we play this song."

Damon Albarn at Coachella. April 20, 2024

Tender

I stand by what I posted upthread 12 years ago - that Blur will still be chugging along like Status Quo. Except Quo actually had a sense of humour about themselves.

Don't know if they did really, remember when they sued radio 1 for not putting them on the playlist?