|
Blur - Leisure
Reviewed
by
Q, August 1991
 With their speedy rise to prominence in the
overpopulated indie dance pop crossover zone assisted by
a trio of corking single, Blur's debut fulfils a host of
whispered promises and provides a wholesomely chunky
consolidation of the power-packed pre-emptive single
strikes. This latest bunch of floppy-fringed pop cadets
in baggy clothing should consummate their burgeoning pop
romance in fine style, for Leisure is a substantially
stocked treasure-chest of hit singles just waiting to
happen.
Cobbled together from a variety of divergent
sources, Colchester's favourite sons have arrived at a
distinctly English sound-beneath the thinly signposted
psychedelia gauze of close-cropped harmony and electric
guitars fed through a mincing machine of effects pedals
lurks a selection of pin-sharp melodies, battered into
shape by a roughneck post-punk edge which prevents any
aberrant backsliding into a blissed-out soporific daze.
Throughout Leisure, producers Stephen
Street, Mike Thorne and Steve Power and Steve Lovell
achieve a neat, knowing balance between glossy pop sheen
and raggedy-arsed guitar wig-out, and nowhere is this
more pronounced than on the three singles: She's So High
is a gorgeous melange of The Byrds-style harmony and
lazily crunching power chord, whilst Bang and There's No
Other Way combine fanciful skittering drumbeats with a
massively memorable chorus to a dizzying effect which is
scarcely diminished by radio-intensified familiarity.
A relative lack of substance in the lyric
department is manfully camouflaged by singer Damon
Albarn, whose languid, lethargically enunciated vocals
are tossed everywhichway by depth charge drumbeats and
bruising guitar. Slow Down boasts another radio-friendly
amply proportioned chorus, buffeted by a storm of
sizzling cymbals and eardrum-threatening feedback before
the neighbours are given a well-earned break with
Repetition, a pedestrian loop tape of hypnotic fuzztones.
Muskets are promptly re-primed for the
splendid pop racket of Fool and the stop start rhythm and
engaging sensurround rock guitar of Come Together. A
small case of petty larceny is perpetrated on High Cool
as Blur sneakily half-inch the guitar riff from Taxman
and pump it up to a fearsome dancefloor rumble. Best is
last: Wear Me Down is a glorious sonic collision of
heavyweight guitar histrionics and a classically simple
pop melody (the peaceful co-existence of the rough and
the smooth having proved to be Blur's loud and lavishly
scrawled signature). Elbowing their way rudely to the
front of the queue, Blur could become a four-letter word
which will richly enhance pop's limited vocabulary.
(4/5)
Paul Davies
|
