Also this issue:

A Man Up
Father and Lilys frontman Kurt Heasley takes responsibility for the band he keeps rebuilding.
-Brian Howard

The Couple That Plays Together
Megan and Mason Wendell run Canary Publicity all day and make music all night in The Method and Result.
-Patrick Rapa

Al Green
-Paul Burress

Mondo Generator
-Sam Adams

Fog/Dosh/Beans/ The Majesticons
-A. D. Amorosi

Simply Jeff
-Sean O’Neal

DAT Politics
-Chris Nosal

Cobra Verde
-Brian Howard

May 22-28, 2003

music

Juliet Fletcher on Blur

by Juliet Fletcher

Blur

Think Tank

(EMI)

Is there a proper name for the impulse in art students to wave around glo-sticks? Since 1995, Blur have battled with the accusation that they were an art-school band made good. And while they spent 1994, the year of Parklife's release, discussing Derrida at wine bars like The Groucho Club in London with other artists, other writers, they were blamed for behaving exactly like students.

Which is to set aside the fact that most -- no, let's make that practically all -- student bands stink, and Blur by those standards didn't.

But before that, there was Seymour -- an obstreperous incarnation, featuring Damon Albarn sporting a bowl haircut. They seemed ripe for glo-stick assimilation: they were a bit druggy, they penned "She's So High" and then were forced to retitle themselves once signed by Food Records. With the name change, Blur ascended to a legacy of British guitar-led pop (a scene for which some soon adopted a condensed term). Seymour, the shoe-gazing outfit with long hair, spinning-camera music videos and named after the J.D. Salinger character, were left in the dust.

The (no doubt careful) naming of Blur's Think Tank is pertinent, because ideas -- big, bristly lyrics -- have ended up, latterly, driving the four-piece. At their peak, they took the ire out of satire, first crafting chirpy ditties about despicable yuppies ("Charmless Man," after The Smiths' "This Charming Man") and later smoothed some melodic edges and roughed others to explore and pay homage to American lo-fi (apparent all over their self-titled fifth album).

So, with Think Tank, have they run out of fuel? There's no way of getting round the fact that, with the departure of guitarist Graham Coxon, they've thrown out the lyric book in favor of Albarn's electronica experiments: strongly-structured songs are exchanged for breathable atmospheres. These support diverse life -- piping Beach Boys euphoria surrounded by glossy, pop production on "Out Of Time," swooshing dark beats on the subterranean "On the Way To The Club." But the drilled trip-hop drums on that same track are tired. The decibel ambush of "We've Got a File on You" shouts and screeches -- to a halt. "Crazy Beat," one of two tracks produced by Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim) makes abundant use of a stupid duck noise.

This is an impressionistic music-making: Albarn mentions the sunshine (during "Out of Time") and, like that, bhangra notes break through. Even as it's redeemed by certain tracks -- the comforting bluegrass notes of "Caravan," for example -- the technique can't excuse "Gene By Gene" -- so similar to The Clash's "Bank Robber" yet so sullied it practically has a yellow ball bouncing atop the lyrics.

In short, the album's a few sizes too loose for the band's frame. It's a mish-mash made by musicians using topical application of unusual instruments, but without anything topical to sing about.

So gone are the innovators. If we can assume that (along with the rest of the musical world) they'd have discovered big-beat electronic music technology in the intervening 12 years, then Think Tank is the best record Seymour could ever have made. No, this is a low.

Blur play the Y100 FEZtival, Mon., May 26, noon, $35-45, with Audioslave, Beck, The Used, Finch, Blur, The Roots and AFI Second Stage: (Hed)PE, Vendetta Red, CKY, Burning Brides, The Starting Line, Hot Hot Heat and Alkaline Trio, Tweeter Center at the Waterfront, Mickle Boulevard and Riverside Drive, Camden.