Review:

on 2011-02-22 CharlesMartel Said:

When shoegaze died a death in the mid nineties, it was replaced by an altogether more radio-friendly style of music. After all, the music press had become bored with charisma-free mop top young men with little to say and a stage persona which consisted of looking down at their feet. The new style, christened Britpop and easily more accessible, it smacked of the attitude and pose for which the Brits had become famous - snot nosed kids with an in-your-face attitude. Blur typified that attitude in many ways. Here they were, singling songs about characters and amusing situations drawn from their own experiences and fronted by their very own cheeky chappie, Damon Albarn, backed by a band of competent if unspectacular musicians. And surprisingly good it turned out to be - while it lasted.

I am ambivalent about Damon Albarn. Clearly he is musically adept, but he does have that pathetic middle-class tendency to overplay his role as classroom smartarse on occasions. Springing from the same well as Mick Jagger and Joe Strummer among others, he adopted a pose of being a more working-class and down to earth sort of bloke when actually he was something quite different. And when he got rumbled for it, he simply got bored with Blur and moved on to new projects.

Blur are just one of those bands which, for me, are worthy of a compilation, but nothing else. This encapsulates the best of the band and is well worth shelling out for. It contains their main hits, especially the wonderful "Song 2" which is worthy for its ability to piss off people with its raucous madness throughout. "Parklife" is clever and some of the other tracks display cheeky chappie Damon Albarn at his cheeky chappie cockney best, though that is an act which can get seriously irritating after a while. Never forget, that this is a pose, perhaps a convincing one, but a pose nonetheless.

The second disk contains a live album which adds nothing really except to prove that Blur do actually sound good live, unlike their contemporaries and rivals, Oasis, who have a dreadful reputation for screwing things up on stage. Perhaps the fact that Blur never got into the publicity machine dream of drunken spats, public cocaine binges and multiple fallings out with anyone and everyone who might have mattered. However, when you consider that some bands use live albums to showcase different arrangements of their familiar songs, this one is something of a letdown for it does nothing of the sort. They could have done so much more with some of their songs rather than rouse the rabble and invite them to sing along.

I never really got into Britpop - perhaps I am a bit too old for it. More likely, I feel that Britpop was an invention of record moguls faced with the potential of a musical revolution akin to that of punk, and this time they wanted to control it from the outset. Hence the infamous and pathetic battle of the bands between Blur and Oasis. The very concept of which indie band could sell more singles to the mainstream is quite ludicrous. However, I do like snippets of it, and hence I possess a pretty comprehensive compilation rather than truckloads of albums and this is a pretty good album as a result.
Rating: 6/10