Modern Life Is Rubbish

Today my CD of choice was Blurs second album Modern Life Is Rubbish, on paper this shut be a clear 8 out of 10. On paper. Lets talk about Blur for a moment.
People that I know and have had the pleasure of meeting Damon Albarn state that he is, not to put too fine a point on it, a shit of the highest order with an ego the size of Manchester. I have never met him, but would probably imagine that this is the case. The Drummer in Blur is a gentleman called Dave Rowntree, he flies planes and tries to get elected as a labour councillor, I can stomach the planes bit but the labour thing, well lets not get into politics. Alex James, I read his biography, a bit of a blur and ended up despising him, a truly selfish man with the morals of an alley cat that was an appalling boyfriend and who, it has to be said only has the cheese going for him, I quite like Graham Coxon though. So that’s Blur and my opinion of them.
I never really heard this album at time of release, I was working in the cocooned world of Butlins at the time and although I bought one or two singles, I never actually bought the album until I had bought the follow up, Parklife.
To be honest, I am not keen, it’s a bad album, really it is. Albarn is doing that dreadful thing that Ray Davies does so well of making the songs about people, Albarn explores it more on Parklife and the singles B-sides but here its clumsy and not engaging in the slightest. It makes, amongst other things sound dated and that’s what you get when you attach your self to a scene.

There was pressure on Julian
Pushing trolleys in the car park
From B to A then back to B
Pressure on Julian

Pressure on Julian

Not just Pressure on Julian though, the whole sound of the album is rather contrived, distancing themselves from the baggy sound on their debut Leisure, they could see that dead horse was flogged and they had to change for album two, as it is, the songs do not stand up, sure the singles are fairly inoffensive in Sunday Sunday, Chemical World and For Tomorrow, but they are extremely one dimensional singles. With hindsight its reasonable to assert that Albarn didn’t really hit his stride with his songwriting until the last two albums, moderately enjoyable songs such as This Is A Low from Parklife or Villa Rosie from this album, The Universal from The Great Escape, maybe a handful of songs more from those albums but as a band they never wrote great songs consistently until 13 and Think Tank.
So a disappointing album, a bad album, an album by a band trying to hold on to a record contract? Who knows 4 out of 10.



Villa Rosie by Blur