Blur - Think Tank (2003)

1) 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

Rating: 8/10

More Albarn and less Blur, but an impressive and captivating transformation that ends up becoming one of the band's essentials.

Key tracks: "Ambulance", "Out of Time", "On the Way to the Club"

Across the folded open lyrics booklet of Think Tank there’s a single sentence printed over everything else in bold red: “I AIN’T GOT NOTHING TO BE SCARED OF”. The same line is the first set of words heard on the actual album as well, repeated numerous times throughout “Ambulance”. It’s as obvious a statement as they come, a pre-emptive response to the situation Blur had found themselves in after guitarist Graham Coxon had abruptly left over creative differences. Blur were heading towards new horizons with a new sound and missing an integral member – sure enough they had something to be scared of.

But that’s exciting. Blur wouldn’t be as interesting as they are without having shed their skin and breaking apart from their past a number of times before already. The Britpop period had a limited longevity and appeal, and the band had realised that - ever since the self-titled album the band had been distancing themselves from it. The crunched-up guitars of the self-titled had transformed into the jam-like sound textures and introspection of 13 and where most bands would lead their hit compilations with an openly chorus-driven single to fit among all the others, Blur’s Best Of was promoted via “Music Is My Radar”, an erratically twitching rhythm monster that was more a seizure than a singalong. It’s Blur’s post-Britpop period that has cemented their place as more than a periodical footnote and Think Tank was going to follow up on it: its original “Darklife” concept was intended to depict the dark flipside of modern, urban British life that the band celebrated back in the day, a direct nod to their past but eager to brush it off rather than return to it.

Musically the band were already heading further towards where “Music Is My Radar” had come from, but Coxon’s departure flipped the balance. Him and Damon Albarn’s musical ambitions had been straying further apart for a while and with no countering voice, Albarn became the sole creative lead of the band - and at this stage Albarn was interested in anything but Blur. He had already been infatuated with Mali for a while (leading to the sneaky solo debut Mali Music) and thus Think Tank ended up being partially recorded in Mali, with extensive featuring of local sounds and musicians. The birth of Gorillaz and their slow shift into Albarn’s primary project also creeped up underneath the surface. The rhythmic elements of Think Tank borrow a note from Gorillaz’s hip-hop flavoured genre mash, tracks like “Good Song” or “On the Way to the Club” are direct relatives to the more subdued Gorillaz songs like “Tomorrow Comes Today” and the contemporary pop flirtations lead to the hiring of Fatboy Slim as a partial co-producer for Think Tank - a move that directly lead to Coxon leaving. Albarn was expanding his visions and reinventing Blur to go along with his personal projects, and the rest of the band went along with it. If Think Tank’s detractors ever say that it isn’t a real Blur album, there is a point buried underneath somewhere there.

There’s an element of a blessing in disguise there. Albarn’s toe-dipping into new waters was rather haphazard - Mali Music is a passion project that has little to offer to anyone who isn’t actually Albarn and there’s a reason why the first Gorillaz album largely lives on through its singles and not the rather hit-and-miss whole. Using Blur as his melting pot gave him a way to play around with all those new elements on a platform he was most familiar with, channeling the sounds through a songwriting style he knew how to wield effectively. So while Think Tank may not be necessarily the most Blur-esque album in the world, it’s one of their most exciting. A clearly inspired songwriter known for a good song utilising new interesting elements to create atmospheric, oft-melancholy mood pieces sounds like a winning recipe, and time from time again Think Tank comes off truly inspired and captivating There’s a reason why “Ambulance” leads the charge - not just because of its defiant opening line, but its phenomenal mixture of crashing drums, crystalline keyboards, shoegaze guitars and the deep, plowing bass makes it clear straight away that the band are still going strong without Coxon. On a good day I’d easily say it’s probably Blur’s best song: it’s a bold release of pent-up emotion that builds up into an evocative wall of sound, breaks down into a loose funk and then re-constructs itself again into an unraveling giant. “On the Way to the Club”, “Brothers and Sisters”, “Good Song” and “Sweet Song” are A-game as well, and “Out of Time” is such a beautifully swerving, haunting ballad that even post-reunion Coxon’s stubbornness couldn’t deny its strength. They’re not a million miles away from the inwards-turned soundscapes of 13 but the method of expression here is evolutionary rather than a retread. The increasingly more important rhythmic backbone of the album also gives the normally fairly invisible Alex James and Dave Rowntree a chance to finally shine. For once they’re pushed to the front and allowed to take an equal part of the sound, and particularly James’ crunchy bass contributes greatly to the album’s feel. 

Annoyingly the band hadn’t departed from their old self in the ways that it would most matter - they’re once again in grave need of an editor as the actually fantastic parts of Think Tank are muddled by the haphazard bunch of loose ends and half-baked sketches that keep cropping up. The punk blast of “We’ve Got a File on You” and somewhat aimless “Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club” are at least entertaining even if clear secondary material, but other areas are more misfired. “Crazy Beat” was obviously made to be a single and it clunkers out in the most awkward way, the thick groove of “Jets” goes for three minutes and a terrible saxophone solo too long and surely the only reason anyone ever mentions “Battery in Your Leg” is because it’s the only song on the album that features Coxon, because its bored slog certainly isn’t worth bringing up otherwise. With a little pruning and tightening Think Tank could have been even better than it is, both cohesive and consistent, but nevermind - even with its flaws it’s still among the best of Blur, lacking in the crowd singalongs but offering some of the most musically interesting tracks the band’s produced. It does the fantastic thing of revealing a whole different side of the band, which gets you to appreciate them in completely new way. Coxon’s re-joining and subsequent refusal to play the majority of the songs from the album has of course buried it deeper in the dusts of history than it should be, but maybe he’s just feeling particularly self-conscious about the whole ordeal. Blur certainly managed to cope pretty great without him. 

Blur - The Great Escape (1995)

1) Stereotypes; 2) Country House; 3) Best Days; 4) Charmless Man; 5) Fade Away; 6) Top Man; 7) The Universal; 8) Mr. Robinson’s Quango; 9) He Thought of Cars; 10) It Could Be You; 11) Ernold Same; 12) Globe Alone; 13) Dan Abnormal; 14) Entertain Me; 15) Yuko & Hiro

Rating: 4/10

And you wonder why britpop ended up suffering from such a grand hangover...

Key tracks: "Stereotypes", "The Universal", "He Thought of Cars"

The sound of Britpop eating itself. The Great Escape begins with a track called “Stereotypes” and you couldn’t think of a more fitting beginning: it’s as if Blur suddenly became caricatures of themselves overnight. 

Blur have successfully escaped their potential legacy as Britpop has-beens due to the style switch and strength of their latter works, but the era looms heavily over The Great Escape. It was released when everything had suddenly escalated: the band were superstars and trend-setters and the media’s frenzy over the Blur vs Oasis “rivalry” was in full steam. Parklife had been a humongous success both commercially and artistically but the band were ready to move on, only to find that they were still expected to head in the same direction. The Great Escape was paraded like it was to be a victory lap, a culmination of the era and the weapon to beat their rivals, but it’s more a Britpop hangover: Blur are already over the sound and they don’t care, but they’re begrudgingly pushed to go with it anyway. 

When you stop caring you go on autopilot. As unfair (and plain wrong) as it is to imagine Blur as just a bunch of snotty Britpop lads, The Great Escape is like the band is trying to justify any lazy mental images people have of them. Musically it’s largely Parklife reheats, just with little of the original inspiration or wit left. The songs try to be upbeat and energetic but they’re thoroughly joyless, running through the motions. Lyrically Albarn tries way too hard to tap into the same quirky vein the character studies of Parklife came from, overdoing it to the point of them already coming across cliché. Occasionally there’s an attempt to break free of the conventions as the band try to explore new territories but even they feel unfocused: the sudden style switches of “Mr. Robinson’s Quango” and the hazily dreaming “Yuko & Hiro” are enough to raise an ear in attention but as songs they’re just not too captivating: album highlights that in another era would be clear b-side filler. Somewhat amusingly it’s the before-mentioned “Stereotypes” that’s actually one of the genuinely better cuts, rocking out with a little bit of life and swagger that’s otherwise missing from the album.

To top it off there’s “Country House” – not only one of the worst things Blur ever packed into their albums but also one of the most soulless creations that came out of the Britpop. It’s undeniably catchy, sure, but it does it so cheaply as it shamelessly tries to pack in a hundred different things to catch attention in hope that something sticks. Nursery rhyme level choruses, sing-along encouraging backing vocals, melodic Beatles nods, lyrical Oasis nods, horn sections, la-la-la sing-alongs and crammed-in vocal yelps all fight for attention with eachother in what’s the the pop song equivalent of trying to close a suitcase that’s way too full. Every now and then it appears in my head, I think maybe I’ve been too harsh on it and it’s probably better than I remember it being, but upon re-listens it always proves its nature time and time again. It’s a cacophonic mess and the fact that it was a number one speaks more about the intensity of the era (it was the chosen single to battle head-to-head against Oasis’ single at the time) than the actual quality of the song. 

There’s a one mighty bright spot though, and that’s “The Universal”. If the rest of The Great Escape showcases its era at its most cynical and just where it went wrong, here’s where it went gloriously right. “The Universal” is a beautiful, beautiful torch song in such a timeless way – you can tell from the first listen that it’s a genuine classic of the kind that will live on for decades, and it has. It might be dystopian tale of futuristic drugs, but it’s the single song on the album where Albarn sounds earnest and like he genuinely gives a damn. The strings swell, the chorus explodes, all the lights flash and there’s not a dry eye in the house. Its only downside is that a song of its magnitude would really have deserved a better place to sit in. 

Otherwise… well, it’s hard for me to say anything of great detail about The Great Escape. I’ve owned it for years and I had heard it a number of times before it came to my collection. I also regularly put it on out of curiosity and to see if I’ve not just misjudged it in the past, and it’s still left barely any imprint after all these years. Outside “Country House” it’s not even particularly awful, it’s just completely uninspired, fluctuating between dull and misjudged. You come off it disliking the era no matter the nostalgia I might have for the 90s and feeling worse about the band despite the great albums lined up on the same shelf. It’s a lazy album that undermines the band who perform it. The only great escape that resulted from it is how Blur decided to kill off the trend they helped to create on their next release and move away somewhere completely different.