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Blur -
Modern Life Is Rubbish
Reviewed
by
NME, April 1993
 AND THE
fools laugh loudest. Blur's rise and fall has all the
comic nuances of Reginald Perrin's. Two years ago they
were pop's champagne Charlies: 'There's No Other Way' and
'Bang!' had been Top 20 hits and Smash Hits had fallen
head-over-suede boots for their art school oddness and
blue-eyed middle-class charm. Graham wore glasses and an
Oxford University T-shirt, Damon spent an entire Top Of
The Pops performance grinning madly while clutching a
cardboard Kelloggs cockerel. It was all too beautiful.
But best of all, they had three cool
members. Whereas most groups have one (The Jam), and some
occasionally have two (The Kinks; The Smiths), Blur had
three: Damon, Graham and elongated art school louche
Alex. Not only was Alex cool, but better still, he was
annoying as hell; he once actually said, "The best
this about being famous is never having to raise your
voice." Yeuch!
How they laughed when Blur were shunted off
on tour with The Jesus And Mary Chain, released a
scrawling unfriendly single in 'Popscene' and started
hanging around clubs drunk and unshaven. They couldn't
even charm their way into Syndrome. And all just in time
for the second album crisis. So imagine the horror when
'For Tomorrow' arrived, sunny-side up, as a smart-arsed
precursor to a thing called 'Modern Life Is Rubbish'. Ha!
Blur were back and the annoying one on bass was as smug
as ever! First impressions: it looks great. A steam train
zooms by on the cover, and inside there's a painting
(yup, oil on canvas) of the four of them in their latest
incarnation as mop-top skinheads, slumped on a tube
train. Alongside this polished teak interior are the
words. Oh dear. Blur are not famous for their lyrics. In
the past Damon has boasted of his, erm, skill in
composing lyrics on the spot, the results inevitably
making Eurovision Song Contest entries seem like great
works of poetry.
But no matter, this time they're mostly
great and (gulp) all part of a thinly-veiled concept
album! For 'Modern Life Is Rubbish' (the tail end of Side
Two aside) is a London odyssey crammed full of strange
commuters, peeping Thomases and lost dreams; of opening
the windows and breathing in petrol. And you can put
those idiot Suede comparisons away now. Blur have
re-invented themselves in the image of their youth,
sullen and suburban; as ghosts from a time when you could
still be beaten up before assembly for wearing the wrong
badge. It's the Village Green Preservation Society come
home to find a car park in its place.
'For Tomorrow' we know about. Madness'
'Driving In My Car' with a better tune it may be, but it
remains quintessential Blur. Damon, perennially bored,
never stops singing, and Graham supplied his usual
immaculate guitar accompaniment. It's a classic. 'Advert'
is a droning burst of ennui presumably drawn from their
black period of record company hassles: "A
nervous disposition doesn't agree with this".
'Colin Zeal' and 'Starshaped', meanwhile, are bristling
digs at the numbing effects of air-conditioned life, of
becoming an "unconscious man", set in
the middle of the Buzzcocks' 'Everybody's Happy
Nowadays'.
'Blue Jeans', though, is brill. An acoustic
stroll through West London, it captures Blur between
Portobello Road and The Smiths, and Damon with his guard
down, confessing his dream of eternal pop star childhood:
"Don't think I'm walking out of this, I want to
stay this way forever." Grown men: you will
weep. The side ends peculiarly with 'Intermission', a pub
piano knees-up that rinky-dinks along then gets frazzled
in guitars and speeded-up drums. A comment on English
life losing its laziness to the soul-crushing wheels of
commerce? Or studio bollocks? You decide.
Side Two starts well. 'Sunday Sunday' is
'Grey Day'-era Madness with bad mood guitars, grouchy and
sour, 'Oily Water' if edgy and drunk ("I've
swallowed too much oily water!"). 'Miss America'
aside (a soft-focus smooch), things then tail off
dramatically. 'Villa Rosie' is plagued by Damon's 'if
there's a gap, fill it' kookiness, while 'Turn It Up' is
plain meaningless. Big and post-baggy, it flounders
thanks to Damon's (no doubt) spontaneous lyrics: "Kazoo,
kazoo, you are mine!" Erm, yeah. And as for
'Resigned'? Believe me, you don't want to know.
No real surprises then. 'Modern Life Is
Rubbish' has enough faults to give a surveyor nightmares.
What's great about it, though, is that unlike Ride and
The Charlatans, whose second albums barely limped into
the breach, Blur have thrown on their old clothes and
stormed into No Man's Land with all guns blazing. That
they've chosen to embrace an adolescent London so clear
to them is doubly fine. Blur are now annoying a hell of a
lot of people: they came, they saw, they played conkers.
Blur are pop eccentrics in the fashion of
Syd Barrett and Julian Cope, and if they've made a
mistake, then celebrate - at times it's a brilliant one.
7/10
Paul Moody
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