Day 0746 - Modern Life is Rubbish

 Blur “Modern Life is Rubbish” (1993) – got it

 

Blur had released their debut album “Leisure” which aligned itself stylistically with the ‘baggy’ scene, the musical movement mixing rock and dance rhythms.  The album fared well enough but things quickly went downhill.  The band came to be seen as bandwagon jumpers, they had an ill-received tour of the USA and found themselves owing quite a large sum of money, all while rival band Suede’s star was in ascension.

On the US tour, singer Damon Albarn had found himself missing the UK and listening to the pastoral, almost kitsch pop of the Kinks and formulating a bold change of direction for the next Blur album.  They all cut their hair and geared up in doc marten boots, narrow jeans and polo shirts to pose for photos under the label “British Image 1”.  The music followed suite with a more resolutely British bent to it.  Whether it was the brass band in “Sunday Sunday”, the London-centric lyrics of lead single “For Tomorrow” or Albarn's distinctive accent (labelled 'mockney' by his detractors) throughout.

It’s essentially the ‘classic’ Blur sound of upbeat pop songs with cheeky raucous vocals, lashings of backing vocals and embellished with brass bands and strings.  The clean pop doing battle with guitarist Graham Coxon’s love of noisy lo-fi indie rock and fuzzed-out distorted guitars.

But before you can get ideas about this album being all about Albarn and Coxon, the jagged bassline for “Colin Zeal” starts, with the drums and guitar coming in to create polyrythms against it, until it all congeals into the propulsive pop-rock chorus.

The band explore a range of sounds with "Miss America" being an interesting experiment in minimalism and atmosphere, that vaguely hints at Coxon's future work for "the End of the F**king World".  "Oily Water" almost bears a resemblance to what was going on in American indie-rock and "Advert" sounds like a blueprint for the faster tracks on their next two albums.

A lot of fans feel that “Modern Life…” is the best Blur album, others feel they perfected their sound with the next album “Parklife”.  My own heart lies with their murky, morose self-titled album, but I also like the fact that they don’t just settle on one sound and seem to be eternally questing for the next thing.