Day 0910 - The Hour of Bewilderbeest

Badly Drawn Boy "The Hour of Bewilderbeest" (2000)

Badly Drawn Boy (nee Damon Gough) is someone I was mainly familiar with due to his work on the "About a Boy" soundtrack and the fact that he seems to always be wearing a beanie.  I had no real feel for him or his music at all.

Gough released a string of EPs before producing this debut full-length.   The 18-track album was said to be a loose concept album describing the lifespan of a relationship.

Ambitious project as far as the narrative idea, the mix of styles (technically he's indie folk-pop but there are elements of funk, baroque pop and rock, amongst others) and as far as the amount of music on the album.   

Can't say it really won me over.  It's one of those albums where none of the music is really unpleasant.  Quite the opposite, each track was nice enough.  The problem is that none of it really stuck with me.   As each track finished it was gone from my head and I felt no real connection to the music.   With over an hour of it  (and I  played it through a couple of times) it made for a cumbersome listening experience.

Day 0859 - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space

Spiritualized "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" (1997)

To my tastes this is an improvement on the previous Spiritualized album in this list (entry 721).   They'd taken that sound that I'd classed as "digital shoegazer and ramped up the pop aspect of it.   The opening title-track has an almost 60s folk-pop sound while still being drenched in synths, guitar and spacey production.  

The tracks move between melodic aural overloads, and dreamier, more stripped down tracks like "Stay With Me".

Would happily listen to it again.

Day 0837 - Blur

Blur “Blur” (1997) – got it

Blur’s self-titled album was a dramatic sea change for the band.  After three albums of perky, clean, cheeky Britpop, containing plenty of piano and occasional brass bands; they suddenly emerged with this murky, often downbeat, sparser, lo-fi rock album.

The band’s previous album “the Great Escape” had been relatively successful commercially and critically (and it’s the first one really got me into them).  But, with the highly publicised ‘battle of Britpop’ between Blur and Oasis and the success of the latter’s “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory” album Blur faced backlash, being seen as inauthentic middle-class pop, next to ‘working class heroes’ Oasis.

Guitarist Graham Coxon was also feeling increasingly creatively restrained within the band, to the extent that he wrote a letter to singer Damon Albarn urging that they make music that “scares people again”.   Albarn talked to producer Stephen Street about going for a more stripped down sound and the band took a more collaborative approach, jamming together instead of just working on Albarn's compositions.

Right from the off it's a different sound.  Opening track "Beetlebum" starts with muted, struck guitar strings giving way into an almost monotone fuzzy guitar line with Albarn's slow drawl creeping in over top; the overall effect owing more to American indie rock than to the British music hall.   The second track, the imaginatively titled "Song 2" was something they'd thrown together with Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree playing drum kits at opposite ends of studio from each other and Albarn riffing lyrics over the top.  The short rocker ended up becoming a hit for the band.

Most of the rest of the record continues with its scungey alt-rock vibe on tracks like "Death of a party", "Movin' on", the Coxon penned and sung "You're so great" and epic closer "Essex Dogs".    Elsewhere, tracks like "MOR" and "Chinese Bombs" bring a rocking velocity to contrast the more lethargic numbers.   "On your own" flirts with electronic beats, and mixes that with guitar noises and singalong choruses.

The album doesn't completely depart from previous offerings.  As with the previous three albums there is an instrumental track, but instead of being a jaunty brass or piano piece, it's the moody "Theme from Retro", all organs and indistinct vocal samples.   The song that bears the most resemblance to their previous Britpop work (bouncy rhythm and string backing) is, funnily enough, the track titled "Look Inside America".

It's funny in a way: Oasis spent so much time trying to be the Beatles by copying that band's various sounds, whereas Blur ended up being more like the Beatles through their constant reinvention and deconstruction of their own sound.

Day 0771 - Parklife

Blur “Parklife” (1994) – got it

Blur were feeling reinvigorated following the release of their second album “Modern Life is Rubbish”.  It hadn’t broken records with its sale figures, but was critically well received and the band felt they were on the right track.  As soon as they’d finished that record, singer Damon Albarn started writing a large number of songs and the band worked at demoing them.  They got back in the studio with producer Stephen Street as soon as they could, and most of the album was recorded fairly quickly.

Aside from the opening track “Girls and Boys” which has a bit of a European dance/disco vibe to it, and one or two of the more grand tracks like “To the End”, this album is British through and through.  In fact even "Girls and Boys starts" with a line about “following the herd to Greece on holiday”, sounding like the start of episode of “Boozed up Brits Abroad”.   

The Britishness continues with the “oi oi oi” punky rock of “Bank Holiday”, the brass band waltz of instrumental “the Debt Collector” (as well as brassy bass embellishments on the title track and rocking "Jubilee"), the pastoral harpsicord of “Clover over Dover” and of course Albarn’s almost aggressively cockney/mockney accent pushing into the songs.  Even bassist Alex James' composition "Far Out" sounds like it would be at home in a 1960s Pink Floyd club gig in swinging London.

It's a brilliant album (if maybe a track or so too long).  They do copy Modern Life a bit with the overall sound and having a couple of fun instrumental 'interludes', but with "Girls and Boys" and the loungey stylings of "To the end" they were definitely forging new ground.

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.

0266 - All Directions

The Temptations "All Directions" (1972)

 
The Temps continue to prove themselves to be "more just that band who sung 'My Girl'".  The group continue to explore sounds outside of the standard Motown sound, as already heard in slinky funky wah-wah infused albums like 'Cloud Nine' and 'Psychedelic Shack'.

This album is full of funky grooves, including the nearly 12 minute jam of 'Papa was a Rollin' Stone' and gets in your face with the N-bomb laden "Run Charlie, Run" that definitely draw a line in the sand between this album and the clean, short-n-sweet pop of their earlier material.

It comes with a deceptively run of the mill album cover, featuring a clean-cut band photo that doesn't immediately hint at the interesting directions explored within.