Blur

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.

Album reviews

Think Tank
Virgin (2004)
Few bands in Blur's position can be counted on to make an album as fulfilling and forward-looking as this one, 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.

'Music Is My Radar'
EMI (2001)
EMI is probably releasing the "Best Of" compilation to make more money, and I don't doubt it will. But Blur doesn't sound like a band at the end of its rope. On the basis of these two songs, their music is as vibrant as ever.

13
Virgin (1999)
Blur's sixth album 13 propels the former Princes of Britpop further down the path of lo-fi grunge wizardry first travelled on 1997's Blur.

Blur
Virgin (1997)
It could have been a disaster. It could have been the band's Zooropa. Instead, they discarded their once integral Brittiness for a fresh sound with a universal appeal.

The Great Escape
Food/Virgin (1995)
It's hard to truly understand Blur's "English Life" Trilogy without hearing all three albums. The Great Escape is that last piece of the puzzle which ties everything together and takes the band's formula of acidic, hook-laden English character sketches to its logical extreme.

Parklife
Food/Capitol (1994)
Parklife is the centrepiece of Blur's "English Life" Trilogy, a youthful pop brew of bombast and Britishness.

Modern Life Is Rubbish (Recommended)
Food (1993)
The album has a bit of almost anything someone could want from a Britpop band: intricate power pop, ironic English character studies, sublime mood pieces, and just pure rock -- all in a classy organization.

Leisure
Food (1991)
Leisure has a few magnetic melodies, but a lot of the record's cookie-cutter hooks had lost their lustre by 1992.

Concert reviews

March 16, 2003
Bowery Ballroom, New York
Blur takes the stage in New York with a nine-piece band, only two of which are original members. What's up?