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Blur - Blur Audio CD

A fair review of the Blur "Blur" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Blur reviews here, or go back to the Blur tabs.

Blur Band: Blur
Title: Blur
Rating:
Release Date: 1997-03-11
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Beetlebum 2: Song 2 3: Country Sad Ballad Man 4: M.O.R. 5: On Your Own 6: Theme from Retro 7: You're So Great 8: Death of a Party 9: Chinese Bombs 10: I'm Just a Killer for Your Love 11: Look Inside America 12: Strange News from Another Star 13: Movin' On 14: Essex Dogs

A different kind of "Blur"
I don't know if that was necessarily a good move for their hardcore English fans, but this album is pretty good. Blur is one of my favorite English bands, and this album was supposedly intended to follow influences of American indie-rock. I wish I could give it 3. 5 stars, because it seems to be a bit confused and I think some of the songs aren't very good. "Song 2" gets old, although it does have a catchy beat. Could easily be a Gorillaz song if Damon intended. "Theme from Retro" isn't bad, but seems almost like an intermission. "You're So Great" is OK, not too memorable, has Graham Coxon's vocals. I did like "Essex Dogs", "Death of a Party" and "I'm Just a Killer for Your Love", they had good percussion and bass. "Look Inside America" and "On Your Own" are definitely more pop songs than the others, but are still good songs.

Overall I think it's definitely a departure from Blur's early days as a pop band, sounds much different than "Parklife", "The Great Escape" and "Modern Life is Rubbish". It just depends on your opinion of a band's evolution from one style to another.


classic
Blur's self-titled album could not be a better example. I love a band who works on a challange, even better when they don't need to.

Modern Life is Rubbish, Park Life and Great Escape showed the band mastered every cornor of Brittish 60s pop. Here, they come to the colonies, and do one of the best summeries of the Nirvana/Pavement/Beck influanced rock, then the most vibrent music in the U. S.

"Beatledom" is Brit pop, but filtered thought grungy American guitar fuzz. "Song 2," the hit, is grunge, but Blur play it in an offhand way at a point when the music was getting comercallized and compressed. Even pieces that seeem offhabnd--"Country Sad Ballad Man," beat the most plodded hits of bands like Local H or Seven Mary Three. Kind of reminds you of four other guys from England, doesn't it.

"Exess Dogs" is a long, creepy jam, augmented with eletronics. Not for the faint of heart, it contains almost an albums worth of ideas, some quite dissonenet. Love it or hate it, the piece does give you a window into A-what great players these guys are in unformatted work, and B-the avant guard edge this band had. It all seems genuine, and I wonder how typical a look it is into their workshop.

Essentail .


Exploration Doesn't ALways Meet With Success
This one seems like they're trying to sound like Radiohead but falling far short. I can only compare this one to Parklife and the Great Escape, both of which are driven by the great melodies & tight production. Blur's reason for being stems from their melodies, and this CD is lacking in that regard. I'd rather listen to jazz if I want something non-melodic.


Dont judge an album via it's singles.
What I loved in particular was the songs off that album which were taken off the album "Blur", Song 2 is a given but also the amazing calm and catchiness of Beetlebum and the electronicly driven On Your Own. OK I'll admit I bought thier best of album for two reasons, Song 2 and the clever artwork and after a few listens I loved it. So on the back of those songs, I assumed this was Blur's best album and bought it.

I had high hopes on first listen and I was conflicted. How could an album with some such amazing songs be so. . . bad? The first few songs are great but once part 2 of the album kicks in you end up fastforwarding through all the songs until you reach the end. I've only listened to the whole album twice and couldn't again, and unfortunately the "white noise" path would be the one they followed in future years. .


Movin' On...
After the Great Escape, Blur treaded into really fuzzed-out and tripped out territory. After the Brit Pop movement got exhausted, bands began to break off and move into very different directions. A place where the White Sripes would eventually come from. And the results are mind-blowing. Where the weird sound effects gurgling on prior albums was subtle and hinted at, on this album it they hit you like a brick.

For those of you who heard Song 2 and thought this album would be a non-stop indie rock force-to-be-reckoned-with, I don't know what to tell you, if anything, Song 2 is just a small part in this mind-trip experience. So be warned.

The cd starts out on radio-friendly terms with the Beatlesque Beetlebum, and it serves as the perfect intro to where Blur are at on this cd. The verses are pure minimalist indie-rock style, and they break into a soothing radio-friendly chorus, and the outro builds up into a torrent of buzzing and blurry sound-effects that eventually eclipse the song they're grounded in. It encapsulates what's about to come over the next hour. Song 2 is the indie-rock extreme of the album rocking like a beast. And then you head into Country Sad Ballad Man which is the polar opposite, a psychedelic slow-burner with uncountable layers of acoustic, and electric guitars, bass, drums, and indefinable bubbling noises.

Like White Blood Cells by the White Stripes, this cd has no flow to it at all, and on listening to this the first time around, you have no idea what the hell is going to happen next. In the indie/psychedelic texture of this disc, Blur explore pop music, rock, ballads, pure psychedelia, and the unknown (Essex Dogs). It is one hell of a listen that will leave you mystified and coming back for more.

If you're looking for rock music at it's simultaneously most mystifying and haunting, this is a must. .


You can see a complete list of all Blur discography, or go back to the Blur tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.

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