Blur - Leisure C or D?

"Popscene" was a great single as well (to say nothing of its brilliant b-side, "Mace").

I miss early Blur.

i think liesure, modern life, and park life had a permanent place in my 5 cd changer for a good year in 94. and the singles (i paid good import prices for at the time) moved in and out of the stack next to it. "day upon day" and "innertia" have permanent places in my heart.

criminal to leave out "sing" over here.

listening for the 1st time in ages a year or so ago, i was really struck by how good graham already was. theres some very clever production (by mr street) that allows several, almost simple, guitar tracks to come together with a space and texture that the more proper shoegazer bands ignored in favor of a grander lushness or (in the case of ride's "when dreams burn down") grandness.

sure the general song structures and just about everything improved....but nothing else really sounds like leisure

I mean yeah, "She's So High," "There's No Other Way" & "Sing" are all classics, but that's about it. "Bang!" and "I Know" are passable 5th-tier Madchester, the rest is utter dreck.

the US version has a different running order (shuffles the singles towards the top) and lops off "Sing" for some reason.

I'd probably rather listen to PH than MLiR, for that matter.

Hugely OTM.
I didn't know that "Sing" was left off the US version ... that's nuts, since it's the best song on the album and one of the best four or five Blur songs ever.

Parklife > MLIR > Blur > 13 > Great Escape > Leisure >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Think Tank

to

"Bang!" and "I Know" are utter dreck, the rest is passable 3rd-tier shoegaze.

seriously

Wow, no love for "Repetition" at all? I think that's Albarn's first great song.

#1 in my book

And yet this thread makes me feel that pulling out 13 would be a very interesting idea indeed.

Try "B.L.U." for modern punk rock, for example.

They should be KNOWN far and wide for this, their most experimental album, and they aren't. Why?

ALL CAN FANS SHOULD HEAR BATTLE!

....I'd always personally found it to be a really weak half-arsed effort at the 'Bank Holiday'/'Chinese Bombs' haywire raging wonky punk-style songs they'd a tendency to write (and 'Popscene' too, to echo dog latin). Not in the same class as any of them. It sounds better live, the chorus sounds really silly on record, all a bit so-so, one of the tracks I tend to skip most when I've played '13' - which might just be me, but those aforementioned Blur tracks are some of my faves...

this thread is sort of reminding me of the one last week about whether our favorites, or our classics, are classics cause theyre great all around or if they have some other quality that encourages their classicness

I did hear "She’s So High" on Indie103.1 this last week and it sounded remarkable better than even "Black Metallic."

I'm gonna revive this thread so I stop going on about how much I love this album on the songs poll thread because really...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C-Cgyu6NmY

I FUCKING LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH. I FUCKING LOVE THIS BASSLINE SO MUCH. I LOVE THAT WEIRD TREMOLOED OUT PSYCHEDELIC BIT IN THE MIDDLE SO FUCKING MUCH. I LOVE THIS WHOLE ALBUM SO MUCH.

It is exactly 1/3 baggy leftovers, 1/3 shoegaze wibble and 1/3 what Blur would turn into. This is why I love it so much.

OTM. Was #10 on my ballot.

I always kinda hoped that after 13, the band would come around and not be so harsh on Leisure, since they really did kinda revisit a lot of the ideas of this era. I suppose because Leisure was the album where they were most molded by record company pressures and "this is what is IN right now" as opposed to the ideas they were interested in exploring. But I suppose the "this is what is IN" that point are the musical styles of my impressionable college age listening so I'm perfectly happy to listen to those ideas through those filters.