Sunday, April 25, 2010
Blur: Blue Jeans
I understood BritPop: good tunes, guitars and harmonies. And in the great battle of the period there was only one winner: Blur. And comparing the subsequent careers of Damon Alburn and of the Gallagher brothers does nothing to make me think I was not right.
If Blur had a fault it was their mockneyness. I suppose in Parklife they raised that to an art form - that album's knowing that it was false being part of its point - but it can be a fault. A touch of the stage school brat clung to Steve Marriott in all but his greatest moments. He played a pop star before he was one. (Yes, those are Heinz and David Hemmings in the band with him.)
But this song, from Modern Life is Rubbish, shows Blur being influenced more by the Kinks than the Small Faces. I read it as a little hymn to contentment.
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2 comments:
MLIR is one of the very best Albums ever. It got me through Uni and many essays were written listening to it (and Parklife to be fair).
Never saw Blur as anything more than jangly generic indie-pop shot through with diluted essence of Ray Davies myself, though even there they had the clodhoppingly pedestrian Oasis beaten. For me though, there were only two real original talents that came through via Britpop, and both had been around for a bit longer than most of the competition; Jarvis Cocker and (especially) Luke Haines.
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