Shifting Focus

Naming your album "Think Tank" can connote different things for different bands. If you are, let’s say, Limp Bizkit or any of the musically muscle-bound faux thugs who dominate that dying genre, the operative word would probably be "Tank," with all the creative sluggishness that suggests. But if you are a band like pop visionaries Blur the emphasis is definitely on the first word.

Aside from being one of the most successful acts to come out of the post-baggy, mid-Nineties Britpop™ explosion, the band dared to be clever (sometimes too clever especially for music hooligans like Oasis). After all, Blur is a band who name-checks Balzac on number one singles, bases a concept album (and a million-seller to boot) on Martin Amis’ London Fields, pays homage to art-house films like Alain Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad and Stanley Kubrick’s A Cockwork Orange in their videos, and hobnobs with visual artists like Damien Hirst and founding Dogme 95 brother Thomas Vinterberg. (Both directed pop promos for the band.) No wonder Noel Gallagher is seething.

Here’s another reason: Blur makes great pop songs. To elucidate, the band continues to make music that is relevant without the usual press release announcements of "reinventing themselves" or fashionable posturing. Change seems to flow naturally with Blur’s evolution; the band seems intent on not letting its muse wade in stagnant waters. The band’s restless creative natures however do not hamper or detract from the solid craftsmanship of Blur’s songwriting, each odd or left-field influence building to support what are essentially hum-able tunes. (Although Blur has admittedly plunged into esoteric depths in past albums like the Julian Cope-cracked spectrum of their sophomore outing "Modern Life is Rubbish" and the lo-fi aesthetics and off-kilter American influence of the past two albums, they remain unscathed, never letting the game of writing catchy melodies come free from their grasp.) And it doesn’t hurt that they are occasionally danceable as well.

On Blur’s new album, though, metamorphosis has been brought about not only by the band’s commitment to evolve but by the seismic jolt of the departure of founding member/ guitarist Graham Coxon. Essentially the cornerstone of Blur’s sound, Coxon’s talents as a sound architect – with its frazzled inventiveness and sheer elliptical beauty – epitomized all the excitements of the band. For starters, who can imagine Blur classics such as Beetlebum without the deadpan, slacker guitar intro? Or M.O.R without the adrenaline rush of the harmonics riffing? Coffee and TV without the churning guitar rhythm or, for that fact, Coxon’s coolly detached lead vocal? Given that frontman Damon Albarn’s skill as a songwriter is the other essential element in Blur’s dynamic, it really leaves one wondering on how the band could’ve survived the Nineties without Coxon.

(Even then, he was touted as the bearer of Johnny Marr’s mantle from a field that included the aforementioned elder Gallagher and the genuinely unhinged but immensely talented Nick McCabe from sadly defunct outfit The Verve.) More importantly though, the absence of a key player throws the future of any band into uncertainty. In a climate of ever-changing pop tastes, chances of survival are decidedly slim.

But guess what? Blur has.

"Think Tank" is a remarkable album that pulses with modernity (but – characteristic of the band – with sly nods to the glorious past), imbued with an innate introspection, and has an expanded worldview outside the shores of their Dear Old Blighty. And, as is the case on a couple of tracks – particularly those produced by former Housemartin Norman Cook a.k.a. Fat Boy Slim – it rocks.

But not without surprises.

Songs like Gene By Gene start off willfully dumb but gradually rises to a lush tapestry of vibrant melodies and factory industry rhythms. For those misguided individuals who think that Song 2 is the band’s supreme achievement, there are straight up punk-inflected numbers (which owe a bigger debt to the Buzzcocks than the Clash) like Crazy Beat and We’ve Got a File on You. (The latter however is gene-spliced with Middle Eastern harmonies, but the obtuse need not worry as it never hinders the relentless beat.)

On the more somber numbers, Blur remains at its best. For the most part it is here that the band succeeds in using its strength as a three-piece to highlight the empty spaces rather than go the mistaken route of trying to fill in Coxon’s parts. Taking on guitar chores, Albarn performs particularly well on the sparse Out of Time, the rough edges adding pathos to a ballad sung in a wounded key. Another track, Sweet Song, is especially touching for the fact that even listening to it in the car amidst heavy traffic and its cacophony of car horns (which every city dweller knows only too well) one can’t help but still be moved.

Coxon though makes one appearance on the album’s closing track Battery In Your Leg and it should be mentioned that it is his presence that actually saves the track from devolving into latter-period schmaltzy Elton John territory. With a guitar that is equal parts terrifying and enchanting, he announces his departure from Blur with much style and panache.

Aside from that (and maybe the clumsy opener Ambulance), "Think Tank" is an enthralling record of a band still pushing its boundaries while coming to terms with loss. The gains it marks up though amply vanquish any speculation that Albarn and his cohorts are anything but serious in the pursuit of making the best music of our troubled times.

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Thanks to Twinky Lagdameo and David Zarraga for their help with this article, and to Igan D’ Bayan for maintaining sanity and good taste in these pages.

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Want to hear more of Blur? Those who do are advised to troop down to Gweilos in C. Palanca St. in Makati. Cheap beer, great sounds and interesting people. It’s especially good on Mondays when DJ Ro plays the best from the ’60s to the ’80s. Happy hour all night!

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Send comments and reactions to: erwin_romulo@hotmail.com.