Un-Brit pop

Blur prove there'll always be an England

by Matt Ashare

The safest route for heat-seeking Brit-poppers in the '90s has been to make a beeline for the past. With Americans distracted by the unkempt, unsettling roar of homegrown guitars, and the English monarchy in its worst state since Richard III, bands like Ocean Colour Scene and Dodgy wrap themselves in the retro cocoon of Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy-era Who. Pulp shelter in the glam of new wave. Kula Shaker recycle organ-grinding paisley patterns from hippy-dippy Manchester, which were borrowed to begin with from the psychedelic '60s. And Oasis's wonderwall of guitars gets a boost from the "Sex Beatles" tag, evoking two high points in British rock. If we're to believe the hype, Brit pop is now so damn regressive that the kids over there have taken to ambient electronic music. What a shame.

Blur, who come to the Middle East this Friday, may yet change all that. The band -- singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, and drummer Dave Rowntree -- emerged as part of a retro fad, grafting the once ubiquitous Manchester beat to druggy dance-rock singles like "There's No Other Way" on 1991's Leisure (Food/SBK). Rather than going down in history as a relic of a brief period in British pop when every band had a one-syllable name, they started rewriting their own past the following year, recasting themselves in dapper mod clothes as the rightful heirs to the same very British strain of working-class, social-critic pop that ran through the Kinks in the '70s and the Jam in the '80s. You didn't have to be a cultural anthropologist to trace the lineage of Albarn's "Dan Abnormal" back to Paul Weller's "Billy Hunt," who was in turn a relative of Ray Davies's "David Watts."

Sure, it was a retro-gimmick, but it was their own retro-gimmick. And it worked, inspiring a trilogy of sharp albums including 1994's conceptually brilliant Parklife (Food/SBK). That put Blur on the Top of the Pops in England, and deeply at odds with American rock. Just as grunge was letting its flannel shirttails hang down over torn jeans, Blur had tucked their Oxford shirts into a pair of neatly pressed slacks.

The new Blur (Food/Virgin, due out this Tuesday) -- Somewhat Slanted and Enchanted might have been a better title, but more on Pavement later -- sees a new image emerge. Gone are the immaculately tight and spiffy three-minute pop tunes, the third-person character studies, and the insular Britishness of Parklife. In their place, the evocative noise of post-Sonic Youth rock, which was so carefully shut out of Blur's past efforts, comes seeping through the cracked arrangements -- flooding abstract sing-alongs like "On Your Own" with abraded guitar textures, churning rockers like "Song 22" with scrappy, lo-fi drum beats, and Coxon's folky solo number with gray clouds of crackling tape hiss.

Blur are kind enough to ease their old Brit-pop fans into this brave noisy world. The disc opens with the chugging "Beetlebum," which, despite an off-kilter guitar riff, still salvages a respectable Beatles-esque vocal melody before it passes the three-minute mark and a series of stray atonal eruptions begins to rip its tuneful fabric. (A reminder that the Beatles themselves once crossed the bridge from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to "I Am the Walrus"?) By the end of the disc, on a track that begins with the skewed, dub-with-spoken-word confusion of "Essex Dogs" and segues into two similarly disorienting "hidden" tracks for an epic 11:24 minutes of, well, noise jamming, the last traces of tucked-in Brit pop have been eradicated.

Between those extremes, Blur revel in their expansive new sound. They incorporate the essentials of what we in this country commonly refer to as indie rock, splitting the difference between the Kinks and the kinks of Guided by Voices. Dissonant guitars, loose beats, obscured vocals, out-of-tune solos, and deconstructed new-wave keyboard accents punctuate songs that are interested in exploring the sonic possibilities of pop rather than the peculiar oddities of British life.

The disc's best moments, the anti-anthemic "Look Inside America," the swinging "Country Sad Ballad Man," and the haunting "Death of a Party," suggest Blur as Britain's answer to Pavement, which is a great thing indeed. Unlike Bush -- who simply used one American band as a blueprint and, even though they make good singles, should probably just change their name to Incesticide and tour as a tribute band -- Blur don't merely imitate. They integrate it. That's something bands like the Who, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles claimed as their right back in the days when Roger Daltrey's mod costume gave way to flower-power hippiewear, John and Paul went from zippered boots to transcendental sandals, and Mick and Keith traded in their zoot suits for faded blue jeans. And that's an example from Brit pop's past well worth following.

Blur play the Middle East this Friday with openers Papas Fritas. The show is officially sold out.