Blur - Leisure

Thu 2nd Jun, 2005 in Music Reviews

I had always thought of Leisure as the Britpop standard, probably because of my memories of There’s No Other Way and the video that goes with it where they are sitting around eating in that quaint little house in the sun. I cannot for the life of me explain why, it’s just some mental association I have with the whole Britpop thing. It’s that damn video with the fresh faced kids who sing sounding like Poms.

I also remember that I never took it too seriously at the time, which was 1991, as I was too into Ride, Swervedriver and the Shoegazer thing to care for this sappy, saccharine sweet stuff. I came back to Madchester later. Now almost fifteen years along, a little older and a little wiser, I feel a little differently. Just a little.

In reality, this album highlights what we now know about Blur: they have the ability to cover a large amount of musical territory and that can be seen in many of the tangents that they continue to take to this day. They weren’t trying to rip anyone off, just playing it safe, maybe.

Leisure was like a timid first step of sorts. Like being the big buy of the new season, where everyone is a little wary of you. You don’t want to tread on any toes at the first training session by showing all your skills and making everyone else look ordinary. So you go out and do what everyone else is doing. You don’t do it any better than everyone else, perhaps just below in parts, but show enough to let everyone know that you’re worthy of being there, but you still need a little work. You are there equal. Not that they were masters of their trade. Far from it, but there were two great tracks and the rest, well you could call it filler.

Damon Albarn started Seymour in London in 1989 with Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James with drummer Dave Rowntree coming onboard shortly after. A name change was suggested at Food Records and Blur was selected from a list of possibilities. Hey, what was wrong with Seymour, anyway?

It was toward the end of the Madchester and Shoegazing period in England and maybe they just weren’t ready to make the leap. Everyone was pretty happy with those two genres even if it was tiring but if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

The majority of tracks, to be fair are more aligned to the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses, than anything else.

From the opening note of Coxon’s guitar in There’s No Other Way, you know it has come straight out of the madchester school of song writing. You would think that John Squires was wielding the axe with the sound of the guitar unmistakable. It’s all good though. Happy days.

The same can be said of Bang and I Know with the latter leaning more towards The Stone Roses than The Happy Mondays. Again, it’s all good.

Opener, She’s So High and Slow Down have a Ride feel about them, but to be fair, combine the two scenes rather well. She’s So High with its dreamy almost plodding backing, is one for the stoners while Slow Down, with it’s mini wall of sound throughout suggest it could probably have a touch of My Bloody Valentine smeared through it. Quite a lot really, until Albarn sings, then the magic is lost. A bit of a shame really.

The full fuzzed out Repetition and album closer Wear Me Down give me the feeling that the Dandy Warhols had a hand in there somewhere, don’t know how though,  while Come Together  has an indie/alt/garage feel to it, skipping along rather jauntily.

She’s So High made it to number 44 in the UK and There’s No Other Way got into the top 10 and while the album itself received favourable reviews, it was slotted in to the fast concluding Manchester scene.

However, Blur had shown enough though to suggest that they would overcome this tag and that they did, quite handsomely.

Not there best by any means, but a fine starter none the less.