Read more: The Stone Roses – the story of Spike Island Read more: Top 20 80s house hitsīlur albums – Modern Life Is Rubbish Modern Life Is Rubbish They breezed into the Top 10 with it, but like Leisure’s cover star, were about to take a dive into deeper waters. But Albarn’s flair for melancholy is exploited on Birthday a gentle sting in the album’s tail.įrontloaded with the best material, this is far from the full flowering of Blur’s genius but it’s a strong signifier. Meanwhile, Bad Day is another blatant attempt to write in a baggy style, and Rowntree recycles a similar beat on High Cool. There’s instrumental grit behind parts of Slow Down as Coxon cranks up the overdrive settings on his amp Albarn’s innate melodic tendencies given a striking counterpoint with the guitarist’s predilection for throwing My Bloody Valentine-style distorted guitars into the mix – at the time Coxon would check out Syndrome, the Oxford Street basement club favoured by Creation and 4AD bands. Alongside classic single There’s No Other Way, Sing hinted that this quartet were capable of something rather special, head and shoulders above knocking out indie disco baggy floorfillers the dark piano-led epic boasted an ambition that far exceeded the material around it. The woozy psychedelia of opener She’s So High impresses and the funky Bang finds Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree locking down a spectacular spiralling groove. While it has a little filler, there are enough standout moments here to make this one of the best opening gambit LPs of the decade.ĭespite four producers having a hand in Leisure, it still feels coherent no doubt down to Albarn and Coxon’s assured hands on the sonic tiller. Leisure has at least two trump cards Albarn’s singular ability as a songwriter and the immense talent of guitarist Graham Coxon – along with The Stone Roses’ John Squire and The Verve’s Nick McCabe, he’s the pre-eminent six-string technician of his era.Īlbarn dislikes only two albums in his career, Leisure, which he describes as “awful” and The Great Escape (“messy”). But they were so much more than Mondays wannabes and head and shoulders above the likes of The Farm, Flowered Up, Inspiral Carpets and The Mock Turtles. When the public sat up and took notice of There’s No Other Way, firing the band into the Top 10, Blur were seen as yet another addition to the current roster of dance-rock bands. I t seems laughable now at over 30 years’ remove that when Blur first emerged they were viewed with suspicion as baggy bandwagon jumpers Happy Mondays-lite interlopers intent on rinsing the last drop of action out of the fashion for Funky Drummer rhythms.īut while Damon Albarn’s versatility as a songwriter over the past three decades has often been viewed as dilettantism – he can flit effortlessly between pure pop to punk, music hall to cultured balladeering – the quality of his work has been astonishing. Classic Pop takes a look at their complete studio output. Led by the versatile songwriting of Damon Albarn and dynamic guitar skills of Graham Coxon, the albums of Blur offer up an embarrassment of riches.
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