Artist Rating: 94%
Peak Album Score: 24
Average Album Score: 23
Development Score: 10
- Not only did Blur jump from being another Stone Roses-wannabe to Britpop kings in two albums; they abdicated the throne and went on a (surprisingly successful) experimental binge with indie rock and avant-garde.
Originality Score: 9
- While the pop songs are superficially simplistic, the chord progressions are often rather jarring, Coxon is simply one of the greatest and most underrated guitar melodists of all time, and something must be said for Albarn's trademark sneer.
Personal Bias Score: 28
- My go-to band for slices of unabashed Britishness with brilliant pop hooks flying left and right.
Leisure (1991) - 77%
Blur's debut finds them thoroughly a part of the British shoegazing scene of the late 80's (headed by The Stone Roses), though still capable of interesting musical ideas. Both Albarn and Coxon are miles away from the sophistication they would both develop (independently as performers and as together as a songwriting team) over the band's career. Still, Leisure isn't awful in any way - it's just lacking in any real drive, and the songs themselves are generally pretty dynamically static and low on hooks (not problems that persisted, thankfully).
- Highlights: "Bang", "Birthday", "Wear Me Down"
Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993) - 91%
This is the album on which many good things suddenly happen. Blur suddenly decides they want to be The Kinks and not The Stone Roses; Damon Albarn suddenly discovers how to wield his voice in a wonderfully sarcastic, but still commanding way; and Graham Coxon suddenly discovers how to fashion dozens of intriguing guitar hooks in every song. The opening "For Tomorrow" shows a daringness with chord progressions that was completely absent before, and the jolly "la la" section just says everything about where the band was headed. Well, almost everything; the rest is said by the following "Advert", a brilliant punk rocker with two great melodies and a highly memorable refrain colored by Albarn's new sass ("Say something... Say something else!"). Elsewhere, the group experiments successfully with Davies-style character portraits in the moody "Colin Zeal", proves that they can write a great ballad with "Blue Jeans", and sounds like a British grunge band on "Chemical World". Although the album is a bit long, and the band shoved all the less-good songs at the end, it's nonetheless fantastic and more than just a warm-up for what was the come.
- Highlights: "For Tomorrow", "Advert", "Colin Zeal", "Star Shaped", "Blue Jeans", "Chemical World"
Parklife (1994) - 96%
After stumbling upon their niche with the brilliant but inconsistent Modern Life Is Rubbish, Albarn, Coxon and crew get serious. Aside from a few amusing in-betweener tracks, every song on the stunning Parklife is an absolute pop gem. Unlike A Hard Day's Night, though, no two of the album's eleven winners sound alike. The best of the lot are "Girls and Boys", 1994's most irresistible disco hit; "End of a Century", a poignant lament to boredom; the title track, a hilarious half-spoken parody of middle-class London life; "To the End", a delightful take on the French ballads of yore (Albarn recorded a version in Français, actually); and "This Is a Low", an epic blend of psychedelia and folk-pop... but the other six are basically just as good. I should note that a handful of the winners are so greatly bolstered by Coxon's fascinating guitar work (particularly "Clover Over Dover", "Magic America" and "London Loves") that they might not even be memorable without it. Between Albarn's tuneful sneering, the pop brilliance of each track, and Coxon's incredibly subtle, melodic playing, there's almost too much to listen to in each track... but I don't complain.
- Highlights: "Girls and Boys", "End of a Century", "Parklife", "Badhead", "To the End", "Trouble in the Message Centre", "This Is a Low"
On Blur's final Britpop outing, the band maintains just about everything good about Parklife - pizzaz, sarcastic lyrics and delivery, diversity, hooks, consistency, a great mix of influences, interesting guitar lines, etc - cuts out the useless little tracks, and adds a bit of experimentation in form. While excellent pop outings like "Charmless Man" and "Country House" could be straight off of Parklife (and, interestingly, "Entertain Me" could be straight off of Leisure, only much better), the ever-changing "Mr. Robinson's Quango" is quintessentially The Great Escape. The song opens with an eerie "Who are you?" section, and jumps quickly into a fury of guitar riffs and humorous lyrics satirizing the upper-middle class. The opening bit is reprised with great saxophone lines underpinning it, and then the verse (except this time with no instrumentation but a whole trumpet section and bassist Alex James playing a whole latin shtick) alternates with the furious final section (Albarn yelling "Oh, I'm a naughty naughty boy!" quite viciously). Perfect. Both "He Thought of Cars" and "Stereotypes" feature rather dissonant, darker lead guitar riffs, the former growing into a dreary ballad with some great instrumental hooks, and the latter into one of the group's most searing pop-rockers. Far from being a break with or a knockoff of Parklife, The Great Escape manages to follow in the steps of its brilliant predecessor while adding an entire new dimension to the group's performance and songwriting.
- Highlights: "Stereotypes", "Country House", "Best Days", "The Universal", "Mr. Robinson's Quango", "He Thought of Cars"
Blur (1997) - 92%
Apparently, Blur grew weary of the hyper-Brit spiel, and decided to do a take on American lo-fi music (to those who wish to accuse Blur of being a Kinks rehash, this is their Muswell Hillbillies). This is also when Albarn's trademark cockney sneer starts changing into the equally attitudinal mumble of his later work with Gorillaz. Though the brilliant vocal hooks still exist in droves, some of which are among the group's best (the opening "Beetlebum", probably the big highlight, has an utterly beautiful chorus), much of this album's charm comes from its relative dissonance. "Country Sad Ballad Man" has guitars that sound like they're falling out tune, and an Albarn vocal delivery that sounds like the man is drunk and half-asleep (the end of the track really kicks ass, though). Perhaps the biggest change is that every song is almost wholly dependent on Coxon's role in it. His guitar melodies are as brilliant as ever, but what's really new is his insane range of guitar tones, from the guttural rumbling of "Death of a Party" and "Song 2" to the bizarre effects and thick phasing of "Strange News from Another Star" and "I'm Just a Killer for Your Love". It's fascinating just to hear him play around with different sounds. I wouldn't want to give the impression that this album is only superficially different though - Blur is absolutely not the same old Britpop dressed up in raggedy grunge clothes; only two or three of these things are even pop songs at the core (they're all great, though; "Beetlebum", "Look Inside America", "You're So Great"). Remarkably, the band was actually able to pick up a completely new style and succeed on all counts.
- Highlights: "Beetlebum", "Country Sad Ballad Man", "You're So Great", "Death of a Party", "Look Inside America"
13 (1999) - 78%
As Blur clearly felt compelled to stray further and further from their pigeonhole in the music world of the 90's, this thing popped out. If Blur was the band trying to bury their pop hooks in mud and noise, 13 is them doing away with them entirely. Well, almost entirely. The opening "Tender" is certainly a career highlight: a seven-minute gospel epic with several great melodies and a wonderful choir to add a whole lotta charm. Perhaps even more brilliant is Coxon's "Coffee and TV", a lo-fi pop song that would probably have been tied for best song on Blur (with "Beetlebum"), with a gorgeous chorus melody sung in Coxon's thin falsetto. Towards the end of the album Albarn stuck "No Distance Left to Run", a shakey, very depressed lament of love lost (and minor album highlight). Pretty much everything else is tuneless experimentation, either go-nowhere instrumentals ("Battle", "Caramel", "Trailerpark") or thin songs with very little going for them ("B.L.U.R.E.M.I", "Mellow Song", "Swamp Song"). The one of these that interests me a bit is the first: "Bugman" may be the most hideous of the whole bunch, but it's hard not to like just for that reason. Albarn's vocal melody is reduced to him just kind of spitting the lyrics out angrily, Coxon's guitar tone has never been so trashy, and in the middle of one of the verses the song just flails into a completely atonal multiple guitar break that lasts about ten seconds longer than it's expected to (and that's the charm of it!). As with the album itself, though, "Bugman" overstays its welcome, and it reveals itself to be the product of a band that isn't really sure what it wants from itself anymore.
- Highlights: "Tender", "Coffee and TV"
Think Tank (2003) - 77%
A couple good moments scattered throughout prevent this from being a total failure, but this album sounds to me like Albarn fucking around with new sounds he could pursue (and did - Gorillaz) after his split with Coxon. Well, let's talk highlights. The single, "Out of Time" is quite a pretty ballad, if not on par with the band's best at all, with a rather memorable central hook ("You haven't found the time to open up your mind, and watch the world spinning gently out of time"); "On the Way to the Club" grooves on a nice beat and through a real explosive (well, sort of) chorus bit ("And I just wanna be, darlin, with you..."), and ends with some cool drum work. I guess "Gene by Gene" plays around with some cool noises and grooves sorta hard, but it's pointless as anything else here. Except "Battery in Your Leg", I guess, which is kind of poignant, and has some interesting production on the piano and guitar. So how terrible is this album? Not really, though I guess it lacks the highs of 13 (but also some of the lows and a lot of the direction... well, I guess there wasn't much there either). Come back Graham!
- Highlights: "Ambulance", "Out of Time", "On the Way to the Club", "Battery in Your Leg"
Think Tank (2003) - 77%
A couple good moments scattered throughout prevent this from being a total failure, but this album sounds to me like Albarn fucking around with new sounds he could pursue (and did - Gorillaz) after his split with Coxon. Well, let's talk highlights. The single, "Out of Time" is quite a pretty ballad, if not on par with the band's best at all, with a rather memorable central hook ("You haven't found the time to open up your mind, and watch the world spinning gently out of time"); "On the Way to the Club" grooves on a nice beat and through a real explosive (well, sort of) chorus bit ("And I just wanna be, darlin, with you..."), and ends with some cool drum work. I guess "Gene by Gene" plays around with some cool noises and grooves sorta hard, but it's pointless as anything else here. Except "Battery in Your Leg", I guess, which is kind of poignant, and has some interesting production on the piano and guitar. So how terrible is this album? Not really, though I guess it lacks the highs of 13 (but also some of the lows and a lot of the direction... well, I guess there wasn't much there either). Come back Graham!
- Highlights: "Ambulance", "Out of Time", "On the Way to the Club", "Battery in Your Leg"
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