Main menu
Fretplay home Submit tabs

Blur
Blur tabs Blur discography

Channels
Guitar channel Bass channel Guitar videos Reviews

Message Forum
Guitar forum Bass forum Bands and artists Promote your band Recent discussions All categories

Fretplay.com

Blur guitar tabs

CD reviews

Think Tank

Blur - Think Tank Audio CD

A fair review of the Blur "Think Tank" 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.

Band: Blur
Title: Think Tank
Rating:

Release Date: 2003-05-12
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: My White Noise/Ambulance 2: Out Of Time 3: Crazy Beat 4: Good Song 5: On The Way To The Club 6: Brothers And Sisters 7: Caravan 8: We've Got A File On You 9: Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club 10: Sweet Song 11: Jets 12: Gene By Gene 13: Battery In Your Leg

By Far Blur's Best Album
It's very mellow, that much is for sure, very sweet and poignant for the most part, but it's got a few jamming numbers true to Blur fashion. If you listen to all the Blur albums chronologically, it sounds as if they are gearing up (down?) for this album, especially when you consider 13. Electronics dominate this album, but I would hardly call it techno. In fact, it's hard to categorize this album. Not quite rock, not quite electronica, not quite pop, alternative maybe, but alternative what? Suffice it to say that this is good music and a very bold step from a very creative band. Great album, I recommend it highly. .

Blurs the line between ok and very good
. One of those indie rock-pop light experimenter's that manages to back up enough woozy, hip posturing with catchy, diverse substance and effectively eccentric accentuation to deem acceptable, if not worthy.

One great song, plus a lot of good singing.
Especially when the band is Blur, whose sound was created by Graham Coxon's scraping, dissonant guitar hooks. You'd expect any band to crash and burn after their lead guitarist left. But Coxon left, and only plays on one song on Think Tank. The rest was written by Damon Albarn, who had been taking an interest in electronic music after the unexpected success of his Gorillaz project. And, oddly enough, it's not as bad as you'd expect. Not good -- it's probably Blur's worst album -- but not as bad as you'd expect.

In fact, Think Tank even has what is probably the last great Blur song, namely "Ambulance. " Bassist Alex James compensates for Coxon's absence with a tight, funky bass hook, which only emerges toward the end, after a cinematic build-up. I love the way the song gradually rears up from the swampy drum track, and Albarn's singing is great, along with the weird distorted vocal hook. There is something to be said for Albarn's electronic experiments, sometimes.

The vocals are consistently good. At some point around the turn of the century, Albarn became an amazing singer. He was always appealing, since the Britpop days; his writing was clever and his voice dramatized it well. But purely in terms of singing ability, he wasn't very good. He had a heavily accented, off-key voice that was redeemed only by his acting abilities. But now, he's the best vocalist in popular music. In "Ambulance," his voice is a vulnerable, soft falsetto. In "On The Way To The Club," it's full of daydreaming detachment. In "Out Of Time," it's sympathetic and gentle. In "Brothers and Sisters," it takes on a husky tone that sounds all dangerous and sexy. I can't believe I just wrote that about him, but there you have it. He's just as great on the second Gorillaz album. Seems that he gets better with age. I have a lot of criticism for the album, but I've probably listened to it more times than to Modern Life Is Rubbish, and it's probably thanks to Albarn's singing.

Nonetheless, this would still have been a much better album with Coxon aboard. You can see the difference if you listen to his guitar line in "Battery In Your Leg. " The song is completely bland and insubstantial, even Albarn's vocal doesn't catch one's attention, but the reverberating guitar, when it finally appears, instantly adds palpable emotion and drama. And it's not even Coxon's best guitar line, by any means. If he could do that for one song with so little effort, what might he have done for the rest of the album?

But unfortunately, Albarn wasn't interested in writing guitar songs. He may not have been interested in writing songs at all. It seems that he was unduly fascinated with Radiohead's Kid A. Press releases played up the alleged influence of world music on Albarn, but it is nowhere to be found here except in a few intros and outros. Instead, Think Tank largely consists of sleepy ballads with electronic production ("Good Song," "Sweet Song," "Caravan"), and thus is extremely similar to Amnesiac. Albarn's voice on tracks like "Caravan" even resembles Thom Yorke on "You And Whose Army?"

This strange fixation on sullen minimalism leads to a truly horrible song called "Crazy Beat," which is a carbon copy of "The National Anthem" from Kid A, except Fatboy Slim makes it even worse by adding an unlistenable croaking voice that repeats the song title endlessly. Like in "The National Anthem," the music consists of an inept rhythm. The song thankfully contains no cacophonous trumpets, but they too get their turn elsewhere on the album, in another truly horrible song called "Jets," which has the most pointless, tuneless saxophone solo that ever appeared on any rock record. Albarn tops it off with a singularly inane lyric, which mostly consists of "la la la. "

The casualties go on. "We've Got A File On You" is a failed attempt to replicate "Song 2," and is even worse than "Chinese Bombs" from the self-titled album, which itself was a failed attempt to replicate "Song 2. " There is one more truly horrible song in the form of a bonus track called "My White Noise," whose gratuitously profane lyrics saddled the album with a parental guidance sticker. Other songs, like "Gene By Gene," "Good Song," and "Sweet Song," are not terrible, but not very interesting either -- this is where Coxon would have been useful. Even "On The Way To The Club," the best song after "Ambulance," ends with notably inept keyboard noodling, where Coxon would have probably come up with a good guitar line.

Think Tank was probably doomed from the start. By this point, Albarn had become obviously bored with the confines of Blur. Nowadays, he's more like a theatre director than a lead singer in a band; he's all over the place with all kinds of collaborations, and recently even a Chinese opera. Perhaps his change of attitude also contributed to Coxon's departure. Whatever the reasons, Think Tank is mediocre; but at the same time, it does have one great song in "Ambulance," and the vocals make it listenable, if not good.

A beautiful album that cannot be missed
They started off somewhat bland and just got better and more strange. Blur is a band that instead of starting off great and slowly becoming dull, it is the exact opposite. However, instead of taking their music to a more psychedelic level higher than 13, they actually pretty much dropped their odd music compositions altogether. What they came up with instead was an album full of rhythm and beautiful melodies they have rarely tackled before. The hidden track, "Me, White Noise" while not, let's say, spectacular, it is a satisfying dance techno song that will stay in your head for a few days. Once "Ambulance" starts, however, you will really get a good taste of the what the album has to offer: pretty harmonies with interesting instrumentation and vocals that will instantly change your mood between sad and happy contentment with just a change of syllable. The next song "Out of Time" is even better than the previous. I usually don't prefer Blur singles over the other tracks, but I find myself thinking about this song so many times because it's just that beautiful of a song. Then we get to songs like "Crazy Beat" and "We've Got a File on You" that completely kills your original mood and instead makes room for loud fast rock songs. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. In fact, I love it. Both songs have such interesting instrumentation and other sounds that it hard to be bored with them. "Jets" is something everyone has to hear. It reminds me of 13's Caramel and Trimm Trabb in that it uses a simple melody and builds into six minutes of masterpiece. The album closes with one of the most beautiful final tracks (or tracks in general) I have ever heard, "Battery In Your Leg. " If you are worried about listening to this album because of the absence of Graham Coxon, do yourself a favor and listen to it. Their is neither a "dud" nor a "filler" on here. Every song has something great to offer. This isn't a diverse pop album like Parklife. This isn't an intense psychedelic journey like 13. This is an album that delivers gorgeous music and shows that Blur is still not afraid of change.

Bit a downer for Blur, but enough to recommend
Songs like "Ambulance," "Crazy Beat," and "Gene By Gene" employ unnatural sounds against each other in often jagged arrangements. Apparent swan song for Blur (Graham Coxon left the band mid-way through its recording) is no less eclectic and bizarre than any of their other efforts, if not even more so. In the latter, the noise can be so caustic through the cross rhythms that it becomes borderline-annoying.

Much of the rest is dreamy pop songs floating by at a sleepy pace; some are strong ("Jets," "Sweet Song") while others are rather dull ("Caravan"). The breaks between are where the best bits come from, such as the catchy rhythms in "Brothers and Sisters" and the short-form, punkish throwaway "We've Got a File on You. " Mildly disappointing considering how good previous albums were, but it's strong enough to warrant a listen from fans and non-fans alike.

Best cuts: "Brothers and Sisters," "We've Got a File on You," "Jets," "Sweet Song," "Ambulance," "Crazy Beat," "Good Song," "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club".

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.