|
| Foocha! is a non-profit Web site. We do it for kicks, not for cash. If you're interested in writing for the site, click here |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
| Music,
David Dear,
15 January 2001 |
Rating: F3
|
|
| |
| |
|
I guess Blur can make a real claim to being the singles band of the Nineties. They made the transition from the tail-end of Baggy to emerge after America’s grunge invasion as one of the big two acts of the hyped-fueled Britpop scene. But unlike Oasis, Blur have been able to move on, leaving Liam and Noel to fight shadows on the tabloid gossip pages.
Can’t say I ever bought into the Blur v Oasis wars though. I kept on the sidelines and decided to sit it out until the singles collections appeared in a few years time - and now here’s the first of them. It’s a ‘Best of’ rather than a singles collection, and songs like Popscene and Chemical World don’t make the cut. The fans will have everything here by now, so this package is presumabley aimed at the bystanders like myself. That said, the fans will no doubt buy this too, in the time honoured way of all fans, and the ‘limited’ edition bonus CD is presumably aimed as some reward to them (although it’s fairly uninspired - simply a few live tracks, largely mimicking the tracklisting of the main disc).
All the usual suspects from Parklife are included, but beyond the glare of Britpop, Blur have continued to produce memorable singles. Alright Beetlebum still sounds as torpid as it did when it arrived in 1997, no doubt intended to buck the expectations of the britpop fanbase. But that’s what made Blur a more interesting band than Oasis - they might have produced some weak songs, but at least they seemed to be trying something new, even if that usually meant just shifting their influences somewhere else rather than truly experimenting.
And occasionally they’d hit on something that was really good - Song 2 still sounds fantastic. Bands just don’t make singles that short anymore - but they should, it’s compressed perfection.
Tender sounded laboured and dissapointing in comparison - at the time, much was made of it heralding Damon’s first personal, confessional work - a response to his break up with Justine Frischman - but to me it simply sounded like Blur trying on a different style. No Distance Left To Run sounded much more sincere, and Coffee and TV showed they could still produce great gimic-free pop songs.
So all in all, a pretty good compilation but few real surprises.
Nice artwork though - probably worth buying just for the Julian Opie portraits.
Food
Top Home |
|
|
|
|
