FEATURE:
I’m Just a Killer for Your Love
Blur’s Incredible Eponymous Album at Twenty-Five
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RELEASED on 10th February, 1997…
Blur released their eponymous album into the world. Blur is an album that I have written about before. Although I cannot offer many new angles, I wanted to mark its twenty-fifth anniverssary next month. In 1997, Britpop had pretty much all but faded away. The scene was changing drastically, and bands like Radiohead and The Prodigy were coming to the fore. The long-lasting competition between Oasis and Blur had sort of past its peak. One can debate that, in 1996, Oasis were ahead of Blur when it came to their fanbase and popularity. That changed in 1997 after Blur was released. Oasis released the somewhat overblown and disappointing Be Here Now in August. Hardly changing their sound or direction, Blur succeeded because they were embracing new sounds and ambitions. I think it was the band’s guitarist, Graham Coxon, who suggested they embrace American guitar music and bands like Pavement. I think they were feeling a bit tired and lacking necessary direction. Departing from the sort of sound we heard through 1994’s Parklife, songs like Death of a Party, I’m a Killer for Your Love, Essex Dogs and Song 2 marked a darker, more American sound. That might sound vague, but one can notice a sonic shift from their earlier work. Song 2, alongside Beetlebum and On Your Own are the best-known tracks. At nearly an hour long and spanning fourteen songs, Blur is an album that takes us to America (Look Inside America), Essex (Essex Dogs), via the rumble of Chinese Bombs and the incredible Country Sad Ballad Man. Few albums of the 1990s started as strongly as Blur. When you have a one-two of Beetlebum and Song 2, that is hard to beat!
Like I do with features such as this, I want to bring together a couple of critical reviews. It would have been easy for Blur to call it quits in the lead-up to their eponymous album. It was clear that they needed to rethink and rebuild as a group. Classic Pop Mag gave us more information about Blur in a 2019 feature:
“Blur’s own Achtung Baby where the band rip up everything they ever knew and start from scratch; a scorched earth policy which marked a breathtaking reinvention. Ironically, their volte-face saw them transform into the kind of US-influenced alt-indie rock band they’d previously kicked so vigorously against on their preceding Anglocentric trilogy. Graham Coxon’s love of Pavement finally won through, ushering in with it a much grittier sound, rough around the edges.
This Year Zero policy to their history (even the album title suggested that they were beginning all over again) coincided with their best collection of material to date. Blur spins all over the map, but, despite its experimentalism, hits the bullseye every time.
Pleasingly, their fans went with them for the ride, too. It topped the charts in the UK and Song 2 helped break the band in the States, shifting a healthy 700,000 copies of the LP.
Despite struggling with a drink problem, a re-energised Coxon is in inspired form throughout and Albarn returns to a more personal style of songwriting, eschewing the character-based material for the most part.
Coxon claimed he wanted to “scare people again” with his music and after previously finding little in common with the guitarist’s lo-fi tastes, Damon admitted in an interview with Select magazine: “I can sit at my piano and write brilliant observational pop songs all day long but you’ve got to move on.”
Recorded in London and Reykjavik, where Albarn now had a home, the band built up songs from jam sessions for the first time rather than the disciplined studio performances they’d previously undertaken.
Beetlebum, the first taste of the album, displayed a subtle reinvention; Coxon’s sly guitar riff and Albarn’s woozy vocals and lyrics, alluding to the latter’s experiences smoking heroin. Blur’s central pairing were in a dark place in their personal lives but managed to turn that into wonderful art.
Blockbuster second single Song 2 remains one of the greatest 120 seconds of unadulterated joyousness in modern music; its gonzo ubiquity at the time meant they were known as ‘The Woo-Hoo! Band’ in the States for a while.
Coxon’s unconventional soloing style sparkles in Country Sad Ballad Man and his guitar sounds more like a squealing electric drill for Movin’ On.
Meanwhile, the heavily treated guitar tones of M.O.R usher in a trademark chorus that hinted the band hadn’t wholly given up their attempts at crowd-pleasing moments.
The heady, intoxicated fug at the heart of Blur is best evidenced in the haunted dancehall dub of Theme From Retro and crepuscular spoken word Essex Dogs. Coxon gets his own dazed showcase in the slacker strumalong You’re So Great, foreshadowing the off-kilter pop of Coffee & TV.
In the main, Blur sound like they are working in an all-consuming vacuum here, satisfying themselves rather than chasing hits. Only the Space Oddity-era Bowie homage Strange News From Another Star wore its influences brazenly on its sleeve”.
In ranking Blur’s albums, it is hard to make a definitive top three. I think that Blur is definitely up there. Maybe Parklife and Think Tank would be my top two. I would put Blur third. It is such a stronger album. There must have been an element of risk when it came to refocusing their sound and vision in 1997. As it was, Blur went to number one on the U.K. album chart. Aside from a rather low position in the U.S., the album did very well worldwide. This is what AllMusic observed in their review of 1997’s Blur:
“The Great Escape, for all of its many virtues, painted Blur into a corner and there was only one way out -- to abandon the Britpop that they had instigated by bringing the weird strands that always floated through their music to the surface. Blur may superficially appear to be a break from tradition, but it is a logical progression, highlighting the band's rich eclecticism and sense of songcraft. Certainly, they are trying for new sonic territory, bringing in shards of white noise, gurgling electronics, raw guitars, and druggy psychedelia, but these are just extensions of previously hidden elements of Blur's music. What makes it exceptional is how hard the band tries to reinvent itself within its own framework, and the level of which it succeeds.
"Beetlebum" runs through the White Album in the space of five minutes; "M.O.R." reinterprets Berlin-era Bowie; "You're So Great," despite the corny title, is affecting lo-fi from Graham Coxon; "Country Sad Ballad Man" is bizarrely affecting, strangled lo-fi psychedelia; "Death of a Party" is an affecting resignation; "On Your Own" is an incredible slice of singalong pop spiked with winding, fluid guitar and synth eruptions; while "Look Inside America" cleverly subverts the traditional Blur song, complete with strings. And "Essex Dogs" is a six-minute slab of free verse and rattling guitar noise. Blur might be self-consciously eclectic, but Blur are at their best when they are trying to live up to their own pretensions, because of Damon Albarn's exceptional sense of songcraft and the band's knack for detailed arrangements that flesh out the songs to their fullest. There might be dark overtones to the record, but the band sounds positively joyous, not only in making noise but wreaking havoc with the expectations of its audience and critics”.
One of the very best albums from the 1990s, Blur is an album that definitely subverted expectations and took the band to a new audience (whilst they retained their existing fanbase). To close up, I want to bring in some of Pitchfork’s words regarding the mighty Blur:
“Death of a Party" (which now sounds like the first proto-Gorillaz Blur song) is the most apt song title on 1997's Blur. Recorded partially in self-imposed exile in Iceland, it is a post-success record, what happens when the odd burdens of mega-fame don't destroy a band but instead sends it diving into uncharted waters. It is 1995's hangover. Exquisitely bleary-eyed ("I'm Just a Killer for Your Love", the oddball sprawl of "Essex Dogs") and often jolting ("M.O.R.", "Chinese Bombs"), Blur sounds like staying up for six days and then accidentally catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. And somehow, amidst the claims of career suicide, it was a huge international hit, the one that finally broke them in the States. (Which is to say that yes, this is the "Song 2" album.)
Blur found Pavement in the mid 90s the way Dylan found Jesus in the late 70s: The transfiguration was that complete, that apparent, that difficult for longtime fans to swallow. Coxon had long been evangelizing American indie rock to his bandmates, and, wearied of fame and looking for a new direction, they finally started to listen. To call Blur Coxon's record is a huge simplification (it also marks the height of Albarn's Bowie phase), but it does contain the first song that Coxon wrote and sang on a Blur record, the sweetly wooly "You're So Great".
Much has been made of the Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. influence on his virtuosic playing, but Coxon has said that the record he was listening to most while making Blur was Big Star’s elegiac Third/Sister Lovers. Alex Chilton was an artistic kindred spirit for Coxon. Both had experienced intense, Tiger Beat-cover-style adoration (Chilton had a No. 1 song with the Box Tops before he was 18) and had figured out early on that commercial success wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Chilton, of course, lost his foil too early when Chris Bell left Big Star and died in a car crash not long after. The tension that kept Blur going, in a creatively fertile, decade-long state of about-to-combust, was the push and pull between Coxon and Albarn”.
I have already released playlist of songs from albums celebrating big anniversaries this year. I will try and cover as many of those individual albums in the form of features closer to their anniversaries. Blur was one of the albums that I had to spotlight. Definitely one of my favourite albums as a teenager, I still listen to it today. Twenty-five years since its release, Blur is a magnificent album that is being discovered by those fresh to it. There is so much in the way of lyrical and sonic range throughout. The band, in spite of a few cracks, sound together and incredible! In a hugely busy and impressive year for album releases, Blur’s fifth studio album sat alongside the very best of them. Their amazing eponymous album is…
A 1997 masterpiece.