Track Listing

1. Beetlebum
2. Song 2
3. Country Sad Ballad Man
4. MOR
5. On Your Own
6. Theme From Retro
7. You're So Great
8. Death Of A Party
9. Chinese Bombs
10. I'm Just A Killer For Your Love
11. Look Inside America
12. Strange News From Another Star
13. Movin' On
14. Essex Dogs

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3892 in Music
• Released on: 1997-01-17
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Having found himself at a creative cul-de-sac with 1995's The Great Escape, Damon Albarn bought a flat in Iceland and set about re-evaluating his role in Blur. What emerged was a more soulful, democratised sound. Gone were the Kinks-influenced vignettes about life in suburban England, to be replaced by a more cathartic approach. Grunge influences, for so long off-limits, were now detectable in the loose, angularity of tracks like "Country Sad Ballad Man" and "Song 2". Sensing that this might just be his moment, Blur's resident hard-core fan Graham Coxon is the driving momentum behind much of the band's fifth album. And yet, accidentally or not, some sense of Englishness lingers--be it the Specials' "Ghost Town" on "Theme from Retro", early David Bowie on the desolate "Strange News from Another Star" or the Beatles on "Beetlebum". Ambitious it might have been, but the sheer quality of these songs made Blur their biggest seller to date. This truly is the great escape. --Peter Paphides

CD Description
It's okay, America, you can come out now! We don't sound like Duran Duran anymore! Me and the rest of the lads had us ameeting and decided it was time to give the eighties thing a bit of a rest. Don't worry, we didn't throw away all our fab analogue synth gear, we just updated things a little. We moved out of that expensive umpteen-track studio and into our mate's mum's garage to get just the right feel for this one. We were so busy reinventing our sound that we didn't evenhave time to come up with a proper name for the album. What's in a name, though, as long as we've still got the pop hooks coming out our ears? We've been listening to some of thatlo-fi Yank stuff and hanging out with some of the blokes from Stereolab in between reading all those fan mags that makeup imaginary battles between us and Oasis, who care more about being the Beatles than we ever did. So the stage is set for our big American takeover. Now all we've got to do is get that bugger at the record company to stop calling our singer "dude".

Customer Reviews

A step ahead of 'brit-pop', this is a new sound for Blur.
It is likely that the majority of Blur fans who purchased this album as soon as it was released were, like me, expecting more of the fun, catchy tunes that featured on Parklife and The Great Escape. However, what we got was something entirely different. This album on first listen seems to feature a much darker sound, which was hinted at in the later tracks of The Great Escape. But to simply label this sound 'dark' is not to do it credit. The more you listen to the album, the less dense and 'pretentious' (as it has been labelled) it will seem. Aside from Song 2, the majority of this album has an almost acoustic feel, and yet this seems to actually increase the impact of the songs: For, without a doubt, the standard of songwriting on this album is as high if not higher than it has ever been. Songs such as 'Country Sad Ballad Man' and the heart-renderingly beautiful 'On Your Own' highlight Damon Albarn's ability to write tracks that really stand up over time. This is the point of this album. On first listen it doesn't immediately impress. However, after a few listens, the quality becomes clearer and clearer. For me, this is Blur's finest album to date, because it manages to avoid all the 'brit-pop' and rock clichés which they used to good effect in their previous albums. If 'Song 2' is all you have heard of this album, you may be surprised when you hear the album for the first time, but it is well worth the effort of a few more listens instead of discarding it immediately. All in all, I would thoroughly recommend this album to any music lover, and although some might disagree with a rating of 5 stars, no album is perfect, and to give it 4 stars doesn't do this beaufiful record justice. Listen...and enjoy.

Wahoo!
Blur's 1997 self-titled classic is a forgotten masterpiece. Cruelly overshadowed by the infinetly more commercial "Parklife", "Blur" is consistently more entertaining, beautiful and engaging.
And yes, "Song 2" is on this album. But there is so much more to "Blur" than just this one, admittadly great, track. "Beetlebum" is epic, "Chinese Bombs" explosive and "Your're So Great" is tearjerking.
In fact nearly every track on this album is stunning. Yes, "M.O.R" leans slightly towards bland boredom, but an excellent mashed fade-out saves it, while "Movin' On" will grow on you.
There is of course the token pointless Blur track, on this album its the spooky "Theme From Retro."
Apart from that though "Blur" is a lo-fi masterclass, drawing on the best features of Pavement et al. Wake up everyone: its better than "Parklife".

One Of The Finest
This album is stunning.

End of.

Where most would assume that after their admittedly somewhat commercial 'The Great Escape' Blur would return with yet more indiepop, but they infact came back with a harder, almost haunting sound that one associates with their later releases.

The fact is that although songs such as 'Parklife' and 'There's No Other Way' may be accesible to the masses, songs such as 'Beetlebum' and 'I'm Just A Killer...' must be regarded as far more representative of Blur's talent.

Of course, many people look no further than 'Song 2' when listening to this work, even the no1 hit 'Beetlebum' is rarely mentioned these days. In fact all the tracks here are great; the other two singles, 'MOR' and 'On Your Own' are fantastically worked and deserve higher praise, but the real gems are harder to find in the form of 'Strange News From Another Star', 'Death Of A Party' and 'Country Sad Ballad Man'. These tracks all exist on a lower ebb complimentary to the feeling of the times and shows blur in an all new light, adding depth and diversity to their already critically acclaimed back catalogue.

Overall this album is, for me, not only Blur's most accomplshed work but also a greater addition to a record collection than 'What's The Story' by Oasis (the other great album of the time).