★★★★☆(9/10)
Fantastic reinvention.
on your own may just be blur’s best song to date. Not that you’d ever want to date a song, but if you did, this one is pretty hot. This album has a lot of great songs, and if I ever have a hankering for blur, this is the one I grab.
The album that secured Blur’s status as one of the most creative and original bands of the 90’s, After rejecting the cheery, overtly English Kinks style of indie pop music that they had mastered in 1995 with “The Great Escape” (“A mad cow disease record” according to guitarist Graham Coxon), Blur departed to Iceland to plan out their next move. Mainly through the influence of Coxon, they decided to strip away the layers of brass instruments and the pristine, polished keyboard sounds and instead added swathes of distortion and generally roughen up their sound much in the style of Coxon’s American heroes like Pavement. Of this approach Coxon said “I’d learned that the pristine approach might be pasteurizing any heart in the music.”
There is still a 1960s pop influence to be found within some of the songs as with all of their albums- on “Blur” however it is buried under the raucous guitars, clattering drums, spooky keyboards, rumbling bass and mumbled vocals. One such example is the opening track and first single “Beetlebum” which reached number 1 in January 1997. A beautiful verse melody and soaring chorus harmonies are set against a rough rhythm guitar and an awesome meandering bass line. The song’s extended coda features an ever-growing wall of noise from some chaotic guitar work, creepy unidentifiable sound effects and a falsetto vocal line from vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Damon Albarn.
With this album and songs like “Essex Dogs”, “Chinese Bombs”, “Strange News From Another Star” Blur had buried their past once and for all. With the much freer approach to writing songs I feel Blur were able to produce their best material to date. I feel this album is best summed up by the penultimate song, “Movin’ On” which explains their need to change direction (albeit cryptically).
Favorite songs,
- Beetlebum
- Song 2
- On Your Own
- You’re So Great
- Death of a Party
Least Favorite songs,
- Theme From Retro
- Chinese Bombs
- I’m Just a Killer for Your Love
JWS's Album Review 