FEATURE:
Turn It Up
Blur’s Brilliant Modern Life Is Rubbish at Thirty
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IT is shocking to think…
IN THIS PHOTO: Blur in 1993
we could mark a Blur album that is thirty years old. It makes me realise that these legends have been on the scene for a very long time. In terms of quantum leaps for bands, the '90s saw a few from the debut to sophomore albums. Consider Nirvana’s Nevermind (1991) follow 1989’s Bleach. There was Radiohead’s massive improvement on 1995’s The Bends – which followed 1993’s Pablo Honey. If 1991’s Leisure did offer us There’s No Other Way and She’s So High, many critics felt that nothing else of much worth came from it. I think it is an underrated album, but the band really stepped things up on 1993’s Modern Life Is Rubbish. The album turns thirty on 10th May (a day after I turn forty), so I wanted to look ahead to an important anniversary. Many associate Blur running in tandem with Oasis, but the truth is this started before and have lasted longer. Blur released two albums before Oasis gave us their 1994 debut, Definitely Maybe. An early Britpop album, Modern Life Is Rubbish was a massive step up in confidence, vision, and quality for the legendary band. There was an overhaul for their second album. Blur could have been one of these bands that faded after their debut. There was a danger that they might have been overlooked and not had a second album taken seriously had their continued down the same creative path.
Leisure did okay, but Blur soon fell out of favour. They had a nightmare tour of the U.S., and bands like Suede were emerging and creating much richer and striking work. Suede’s eponymous debut was released in 1993, a monthly or so before Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish. Their label, Food Records, feared that their new signing was a flop. About to drop them, there was this proactive shift and reinvention. Led by Damon Albarn, influences changed. If their debut was more Baggy and inspired by bands from the Madchester scene, Blur looked back to groups like The Kinks and Small Faces for Modern Life Is Rubbish. With witty, slice of life, observational and original lyrics and a sound palette that was broader and somehow cooler and more cutting that the slightly samey and out of fashion tones on Leisure, the gamble paid off. Albarn’s lyrics rooted themselves in suburban England. Huis observations and lines are among the defining factors on Blur’s second album. There is more confidence and ambition from the entire group (Alex James, Graham Coxon and Dave Rowntree). If Modern Life Is Rubbish gained positive reviews and a few mixed ones back in 1993, its legacy and influence since then has made critics reappraisal and see it in an even more positive light.
If Blur fully hit their stride on the next album, 1994’s Parklife, there are glimmers of genius through Modern Life Is Rubbish. Chemical World and For Tomorrow are sublime and brilliant singles. Deeper cuts such as Blue Jeans and Oily Water perfectly sit alongside the better-known numbers. This was an album that showed people could not write off Blur. They started with a little bit of a stutter and, if some still feel Modern Life Is Rubbish is a little too indebted to The Kinks and lacks identity, there is no denying the fact it is one of the defining albums of the Britpop age, and it no doubt inspired bands coming through such as Supergrass. Modern Life Is Rubbish was a moderate chart success in the U.K., where it only peaked at fifteen. I wonder whether there is going to be any anniversary release or celebration ahead of its thirtieth on 10th May. I am not sure how Damon Albarn feels about the album, as he has been dismissive in the past. I will finish with a couple of reviews. In 2018, for the album’s twenty-fifth anniversary, The Student Playlist looked back at a cult album from a band who were definitely in the ascendancy:
“SUBSTANCE
As ever, true genius wins out in the end, and Modern Life Is Rubbish became a slow-burning success. The end result was melodic and lavishly produced, featuring brass, woodwind elements and backing vocalists, and a much more diverse collection of songs. Thematically, Albarn investigated the dreams, traditions and prejudices of the English working and middle classes in the immediate aftermath of Thatcher’s government – a mile away from the nihilism and self-obsessed ennui of post-Nirvana grunge. The American art-rock leanings of guitarist Graham Coxon, always Blur’s secret weapon, slotted in surprisingly well alongside the English aesthetic, and ensured that his ability to provide sonic context for Albarn’s words wasn’t underused (as it was by the time of the mockney-isms of The Great Escape just less than three years later).
The jaw-droppingly beautiful opening track ‘For Tomorrow’, is the most obvious expression of the new approach, where ‘retro’ could be applied to point the way to the future. Having recorded the bulk of the album by the end of 1992, Albarn had been told by Food label head David Balfe that it lacked a single, and was told to go back to the drawing board and write a hit. ‘For Tomorrow’ came to him in a flash of inspiration as he sat in front of the piano at his parents’ house early on Christmas Day morning, as he nursed a hangover.
Brazenly lifting from T.Rex with its opening line (“he’s a twentieth century boy”) and utilising London landmarks for its psychic space (“But we’re lost on the Westway / So we hold each other tightly / And we can wait until tomorrow”), it was an obvious choice for a first single, and represented the point at which the tide slowly started to turn for Blur. ‘For Tomorrow’ was an absolutely perfect distillation of the band’s intentions for their album, a coherent, smart rebuttal to the predominance of post-Nirvana complaint-rock in the British music scene in 1992, and one which explicitly referenced and celebrated the country’s musical legacy. You can hear echoes of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ as Albarn’s lyrics conjure up images of the unsettling tranquillity of suburbia, right down to the “la-la-la-la-la” chorus.
This moment of classic English indie greatness paves the way for a diverse bonanza through Modern Life Is Rubbish, ranging from mod-punk stompers to lushly orchestrated rock balladry. ‘Advert’ zeroes in on the encroaching culture of mindless consumerism that was being imported from America. The career-obsessed character at the centre of ‘Colin Zeal’ makes for a Weller-esque punk-pop stompers in the vein of The Jam’s sneering ‘Mr. Clean’, while ‘Pressure On Julian’ has the same topic but sets it to something more expansive. While they go down easy without leaving much of an impression, the breezy back-to-back pop gems of ‘Coping’ and ‘Turn It Up’ do much to lighten the mood near the end of the album.
Albarn’s now-infamous ‘character songs’ make their first appearance on Modern Life Is Rubbish, but there’s an ambiguity that lies at their heart that allows observations of mundane and pettifogging routine – about washing “with new soap behind the collar”, about Colin Zeal keeping “his eye on the news” etc. etc. – to avoid being both celebratory at one end or derisory and spiteful at the other. They’re infinitely more complex than the irritating ‘Charmless Man’ from 1995, let’s put it that way.
Much more so than Leisure, which was largely monotonous in its pacing, Blur showed a much wider range of dynamism on Modern Life Is Rubbish. The pace slows on the oboe-aided ‘Star Shaped’, an ode to the power of positive thinking and a masterstroke of English exotica. Neo-psychedelic highlight ‘Oily Water’ gives only the faintest indications of Blur’s erstwhile fondness for shoegaze”.
I will finish off with a review from AllMusic. Modern Life Is Rubbish turns thirty on 10th May, and I think it deserves highlighting. Even if many fans and critics would place Parklife, The Great Escape (1995) and Blur (1997) as superior albums, I think the importance of Modern Life Is Rubbish marks it as an underrated classic. Highly regarded by critics, it is a shame Blur did not feature the excellent Popscene on the U.K. release of Modern Life Is Rubbish. The single did not fare so well, so they did not include it – though it did appear on the U.S. release. Blur would eventually be embraced in the U.S., but Modern Life Is Rubbish did not have a big impact when it was released. Retrospective reviews have been largely positive. This is what AllMusic had to say:
“As a response to the dominance of grunge in the U.K. and their own decreasing profile in their homeland -- and also as a response to Suede's sudden popularity -- Blur reinvented themselves with their second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, abandoning the shoegazing and baggy influences that dominated Leisure for traditional pop. On the surface, Modern Life may appear to be an homage to the Kinks, David Bowie, the Beatles, and Syd Barrett, yet it isn't a restatement, it's a revitalization. Blur use British guitar pop from the Beatles to My Bloody Valentine as a foundation, spinning off tales of contemporary despair.
If Damon Albarn weren't such a clever songwriter, both lyrically and melodically, Modern Life could have sunk under its own pretensions, and the latter half does drag slightly. However, the record teems with life, since Blur refuse to treat their classicist songs as museum pieces. Graham Coxon's guitar tears each song open, either with unpredictable melodic lines or layers of translucent, hypnotic effects, and his work creates great tension with Alex James' kinetic bass. And that provides Albarn a vibrant background for his social satires and cutting commentary. But the reason Modern Life Is Rubbish is such a dynamic record and ushered in a new era of British pop is that nearly every song is carefully constructed and boasts a killer melody, from the stately "For Tomorrow" and the punky "Advert" to the vaudeville stomp of "Sunday Sunday" and the neo-psychedelic "Chemical World." Even with its flaws, it's a record of considerable vision and excitement. [Most American versions of Modern Life Is Rubbish substitute the demo version of "Chemical World" for the studio version on the British edition. They also add the superb single "Pop Scene" before the final song, "Resigned."]”.
I am going to wrap up. On 10th May, we will look back on thirty years of Modern Life Is Rubbish. In a year that saw incredible albums from Suede, Björk, and Nirvana, Blur released an incredibly important and impactful work. In years since it came into the world, you can feel and tell how many artists have been inspired by it. If some were not impressed by Modern Life Is Rubbish back in 1993, there are so many now who think that Blur’s second studio album is…
FAR from Rubbish.