This is the first in a series of articles where Paul Laird reworks a selection of classic Britpop-era albums.
This is my truth, I’m not interested in yours.
The Britpop era produced several albums which are hailed as masterpieces, almost sacred texts for people who want you to believe that they were there…the empty talking heads of nostalgia. Some of those albums are indeed wonderful things. Not perfect, few things are, but they captured a moment. Several of them have been given “deluxe” reissues, the original album remastered, and a bonus disc or two with demos and b-sides added for good measure.
One of the most interesting things about the catalogues of both Oasis and Suede in particular was that the b-sides were every bit as good, if not better, than the songs that made the charts. The Smiths had done something similar, certainly on the earliest singles, and most especially on “William, It Was Really Nothing” which had a song called “How Soon is Now?” on the b-side. Ever heard of it? Blur meanwhile leaked many of their more experimental, and to my ears interesting, songs on the reverse of their singles. This means that there are dozens of songs that are the equal of, the better of, songs that the widest audience are familiar with.
At heart I am a contrarian. Anyone who has ever read anything I have written about the music scene of the nineties will know that already, they will be all too familiar with my insistence on sneering at some of the things that most people hold very dear from that period. A little bit of me does that in order to wind up the sort of people I deem worthy of being wound up, a larger part of me does it because I really believe the things I am saying…at least at the time I am saying them. I am also a polemicist, I have no interest in saying things just because everyone else is saying them, in believing things because everyone else believes them.
I want to criticise, I want to attack things that I deem worthy of attack. If I am being honest I am also someone who enjoys throwing
rocks into calm water…standing on the shore and watching the effect of the ripples. Before anyone else says it…I can be a bit of a cunt.
All of which brings us to the six albums released by Blur in the nineties; Leisure, Modern Life is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape, Blur, and 13. Four number one albums in that run, 22 singles - 21 of which made the top 30 in the UK charts, and a cultural impact that defined the era, influencing an entire generation of artists. Good going. Who could imagine that they could improve on any of the decisions made by the band, their management, their record label, and their producers. Me. That’s who. Me. The choices I would make with each of those albums are going to piss you off, they are going to further cement your belief that I am the worst sort of person, they are going to look like acts of cultural vandalism, and I am delighted about all three of those things.
Blur released their first single back in October of 1991, releasing a double-A side single “She’s So High/I Know” on Food Records. The single was recorded at Battery Studios in London, where TalkTalk recorded “The Colour of Spring” 5 years earlier, and where the Stone Roses had recorded their eponymous debut album. More importantly though it was where Iron Maiden had recorded both “Killers” and “The Number of the Beast”. Hail Satan and all that. It was “She’s So High” that captured the attention of radio, helping it to reach number 48 in the charts, which at that time wasn’t an awful achievement for an unknown band, suggesting that they had…something.
The indie-dance drum groove that propels “I Know” was, according to Graham Coxon a “… stepping stone to getting noticed”. The song though didn’t make it onto the band’s debut album, “Leisure” the following year. Something that has always irked me. Lots of things irk me. I’m very irkable. Ironically I can induce strong feelings of being irked amongst certain groups/cabals of people - often simply when they see my name attached to a piece of writing.
“Leisure” is often described as patchy or flawed as an album. It contains some wonderful moments like “Sing”, “She’s So High”, “There’s No Other Way”, but it does also contain “Bang”. Swings and roundabouts, horses for courses…although if “Bang” were an actual horse it would have been sent to the glue factory very early on. It isn’t a terrible album, I like it. But when you listen to the songs that didn’t make the cut you can’t help but feel something better was there.
The original album looked like this;
She’s So High
Bang
Slow Down
Repetition
Bad Day
Sing
There’s No Other Way
Fool
Come Together
High Cool
Birthday
Wear Me Down
The absence of “I Know” is, to my ears, a mistake. The extended version which appears on the deluxe edition of the album would have been a tremendous way to open the album, almost seven minutes of indie, baggy, groovy, vibes. A statement of intent. Telling their own audience, and the wider public, that while they might have missed this track back in 1990 they still loved it and they were going to make them love it too by putting it front and centre on their debut.
“Inertia” is another song that deserved a place at the top table. The b-side to “There’s No Other Way” it has that swampy, dreamlike, slow groove of something like “Sing”…it has more in common with what would come on “Modern Life is Rubbish” than with the baggy scene the band were riding the coat tails of at this point. Too good to be lost on a b-side. The same is true of another b-side from “There’s No Other Way”; “I’m All Over”.
It has the faint whiff of the pop punk of “Popscene” or something like that “Jubilee” from “Parklife”. Few people with ears would disagree with the notion that “Bang” is one of the weakest Blur singles…sitting alongside the likes of “Parklife”, “Country House”, and “Stereotypes”. Again a better, or more interesting, song sits on the b-side, “Luminous”. It drags the band closer to the shoe gaze, dream pop, of the likes of Lush and Swervedriver and away from the dregs of the Madchester scene.
My take on the album would look like this;
I Know (extended mix)
There’s No Other Way
She’s So High
High Cool
Slow Down
Inertia
Repetition
I’m All Over
Sing
Come Together
Wear Me Down
Luminous
Out go “Bang”, “Bad Day”, “Fool”, and “Birthday”…I feel awful about “Bad Day”, it’s a song I really like, but the joy of discovering it on a b-side would be delightful, and the rest are all filler with little killer. Changing the running order, as well as the tracks, makes for a very different listening experience.
The original album often feels like a collection of songs from a band trying on different clothes, searching for an identify…and it is charming because of that. But this version feels like something more coherent, more confident, a hazy, post-shoe gaze record made by four young bucks wondering about what is coming next.
Hints of the excesses of Madchester, but it is less Happy Mondays than comedown Sundays.
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