Artist bio

See also: Gorillaz, Graham Coxon

In England and Japan, Blur was a paragon of '90s pop music, one of the "big three" (alongside Oasis and Suede) that launched the new wave of Britpop in the early part of that decade. In America, they're largely known as a one-hit wonder for the written-in-two-minutes Pixies ripoff "Song 2". Natch.

The group's four-pronged musical attack was Beatlesque in makeup as well as in sonic temperament: drummer Dave Rowntree, the eldest of the group, was an accomplished drummer who came of age in assorted punk bands; bassist Alex James was a dreamer with a sharply honed predilection for making candy pop. Guitarist Graham Coxon was the group's heart, a technically dextrous musician with an ear for dissonance and an ability to rein in the bombast favoured by singer/songwriter Damon Albarn, the cheeky frontman able to churn out classic pop melodies and fit his malleable voice into a number of widely varying outfits.

Blur matured over its first two albums into a respectable britpop outfit informed by early Who, the Kinks, the Beatles, etc. but really exploded with third effort Parklife, which boiled down the British character sketches and modern life ruminations into a heady brew that topped the U.K. charts for quite a while.

Two albums later, Coxon's infatuation with American indie rock like Sonic Youth and Pavement won the day, as the group's fifth, self-titled album took a more underground bent. The direction was a neccessary one, and kept Blur relevant into the latter half of the '90s. Follow-up 13 was even more 'out-there', a swampy melange on which you can almost hear the group members pulling the sound in different directions.

With Coxon getting the boot in 2002 (just as his solo career was blossoming), who knows where Blur will head next, but the group has made a significant imprint on the pop canon, including about a handful of all-time classic tunes. Which will of course, differ depending on who you talk to.

Albums by this artist

Think Tank (2004)

'Music Is My Radar' (2001)

13 (1999)

Blur (1997)

The Great Escape (1995)

Parklife (1994)

Modern Life Is Rubbish (Recommended) (1993)

Leisure (1991)

Concerts

March 16, 2003
Bowery Ballroom, New York

Blur

Think Tank

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» TROY CARPENTER | CO-DIRECTOR

Blur Think Tank Virgin, 2004 RiYL: The Clash, David Bowie, Radiohead, Gorillaz

It usually isn't a good sign when one of your favorite bands releases a greatest-hits compilation, kicks out its founding guitarist, and takes four years off from releasing new albums while the group's remaining members cavort in widely varied side projects and generally shy away from talking about "that other band" in interviews. It's an especially bad sign when said founding guitarist was a driving creative force in the group, accepted as the rootsy, indie-leaning yin to the preening frontman's bombastic yang. Then again, sometimes signs don't tell you anything at all, and it's best to just listen up.

Blur's seventh album is in many ways expected, but it's also refreshing. Few bands in their position of being 3/4 strong and forgivably tired after 15 years could be counted on to make an album as fulfilling and forward-looking as Think Tank, a 50-minute composition electrified with the band's strengths -- driving rhythms, atmospheric moods, and killer hooks. In a way, this could be Blur's best record.

That's not to say it really echoes or flat-out bests previous career highlights like Modern Life Is Rubbish and Blur. But like both of those albums in turn, Think Tank finds the band having reinvented its sound (once again) and feeling out its new skin, experimenting a little but letting some great songs shine through. Damon Albarn's recent experiences with the Gorillaz dance-pop project and his Mali Music album -- for which he traveled to the West African country and jammed with some of its luminaries -- both definitely influence Think Tank. But the singer is also clearly better adjusted to working with Messrs. Rowntree and James in Blur, and the lack of Graham Coxon only makes the latter two's play stand out more, as the bass lines and percussion arrangements of the songs are emphasized.

One of the album's most incredible moments comes before its opening track, as rewinding reveals "Me, White Noise," a mutant electro-funk song featuring spoken word by actor Phil Daniels. It's like the evil twin of "Parklife": The Fall meets The Streets in some strange Britpop hell. I guess this is the prize for getting a legit copy of the album instead of nicking MP3s.

The album proper is brought to a boil with the dapper "Ambulance," setting the tone with a hypnotic beat over which floats a bass sax riff, shimmering keyboards and Albarn's lilting vocal melody. After almost four minutes, the track dissolves into a funky electronic breakdown with echoey samples and a squelchy riff that in a way resembles the classic sort of Coxon guitar lick that used to be the group's bread and butter. In that sense, the new Blur feels comfortably familiar. But it gets better.

"Out Of Time" is a classic Albarn ballad, up with the likes of "To The End" and "The Universal." This one is given a sort of lo-fi polyrhythmic approach, and the only thing really polished about it is the soaring melody. But the Moroccan orchestra lends such a elegant, yet down-to-earth ambience that really elevates the track and gives it lasting potential.

"Crazy Beat" is pretty much a throwaway dance/punk track (and the lead U.S. single, naturally). One of two Fatboy Slim productions, it shows its big-beat-meets-new-garage hit aspirations on its sleeve. But the album really starts to seem like something great with its fourth song. Cheers to Blur for coming up with the effortless-sounding harmonic sunbeam that is "Good Song" (and jeers for slapping such a dumb title on it). No, I guess they don't need Graham, if Damon, Alex and Dave can extract such a pretty teenage hymn out of a simple looped acoustic-guitar lick.

"On The Way To The Club" was co-written with Albarn's cousin James Dring, and it is one of the album's signature tracks. Alex and Dave suck the listener in with a sultry groove and Damon spins a tale about going out on a Saturday night but falling into a space-time warp hole of some kind. He takes a spaceship ride to a Vonnegut-esque Hollywood NightClub and the song warps with him, mutating into a rhythm-shifting trance by the 2:30 mark. The dissolution lacks a bit of the rock punch it had live, but the album version befits the song well.

Another highlight is the tender, spacey "Sweet Song," on which Albarn gets all sentimental about a lost love. But where on the band's last album 13 he was resigned and sad, here he sounds wistfully optimistic: "I believe love is the only one," he sings, and then "now it seems that we're falling apart / but i hope i see the good in you come back again / i just believed in you."

Toward the end of the album, the group really starts pulling out all the stops. "Jets" starts with pretty simple foundations, but it ends up being one of the album's most audacious tracks, battering away at its insistent beat, and then folding in a free-form saxophone solo. Penultimate track "Gene By Gene," the other Fatboy collaboration, is warped and deliriously catchy, with breezy harmonies and pulsing electronic samples.

And Coxon does show up again, on the album's last track, "Battery In Your Leg." The song marks the last time the four-man Blur really got together in the studio, and its ceremonial placement at the exit gates affords the guitarist a proper bow. After a creaky intro, choral bursts of noise suck the melody up into a cloud, and Coxon's guitar makes it rain it down in fragments throughout the rest of the song.

From start to finish, Think Tank takes the road less traveled. It's to Blur's credit that an aging group who's been through so many cycles of creative focus is still able to craft an album that utilizes their strengths to wholly new ends. It's hard to sum up such a diverse effort, but the LP more than lives up to Blur's legacy, and it sounds way more vital than probably anyone would have expected.

TROY CARPENTER | Troy Carpenter founded NATN from a Chicago apartment during the ambitious winter of 1998 with co-conspirators Ben French and Jonathan Cohen. After a five-year stint in New York, he and wife Lourdes have recently relocated to Indianapolis, where he spends days listening to music and nights in the kitchen at Elements restaurant. Musical heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Super Furry Animals. What else makes life worth living: Sushi, Phucty, runs in the park, and the Atlanta Braves.