The Great Escape

by

Blur

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For their fourth outing, 1995's "The Great Escape," Blur wonderfully combine the successes of their previous two albums, "Modern Life is Rubbish" and "Parklife." This last piece of their fan dubbed "Life Trilogy" is the darkest material they have explored and the most musically over the top. Huge production, stings, horns, and electronica all mix with their trademark witty Britpop.

"Country House," Blur's first #1 single (beating out Oasis' "Roll With It" in a much hyped band war) is a startling song about the drudging, depressed life of a millionaire in his country house. It's upbeat tempo carefully masks the dark tale that sings "Blow Blow me out I am so sad I don't know why."

The centerpiece of the album is the simply bigger than life "The Universal." The song is virtually a lullabye with orchestration, and Damon Albarn's gentle voice echoing over and over "Yes it really, really, really could happen." It's darkness shows itself after several listens with lines like "The future has been sold," and minor key staccato violins.

"Yuko & Hiro" the last track of the album (aside from a brief hidden instrumental reprise of "Ernold Same") is a beautiful electronic song describing the longing between an overworked Japanese couple. The story, perhaps inspired by Albarn's own relationship with Elastica's Justine Frischmann, is the first hint that Blur will leave Britpop, a musical genre they helped to create, but more than that is a truly fantastic song.

Common with Blur releases is the high quality of the album packaging. Interesting and intruiging art and photography make for a booklet that is almost as good as the album itself. Based on the concept of a desire to escape the overbearing suburban world that was taking hold in Britain at the time, the design team at Stylorouge did a brilliant job.

What makes "The Great Escape" so powerful is its subtle textures. More listens provide greater rewards from what is perhaps Blur's densest album. The seemingly unsinkable, almost bubbly nature of Britpop soon reveals the paranoia of invasion from a world of yuppies, CEO's and members of the country club. With production that makes the album sound gigantic, Blur has never sounded so clear and personal.

This album is not so much a sequal to "Parklife" as a dark mirror of it. The tales of Londoners found in "Parklife" have been replaced by the twisted secret lives of suburban dwellers here. For Blur fans this album is a gem and I recommend it as highly as possible. But for an introduction to Blur I think I would start with something else, most likely "Blur: the Best of" or "Parklife." A challenging album that never ceases to entertain me.

-Justin M. Freiberg

Allow me to sum up my history with this album; bought it, sold it, missed it, bought it again, and now I'm tempted to sell it again.

That's the thing about this album: a lot of it is catchy and essential as far as understanding Blur as a whole, but at the same time, to steal from Noel Gallagher, it's chimney sweep music. Exhibit A: "Mr Robinson's Quango", quite possibly the most irritating moment they've put on tape.

I bought this one again because I thought "Stereotypes" was a great peice of guitar music and "The Universal" a lovely peice of music in general. I even liked "Globe Alone" which hinted at their "lo-fi" direction they would later embrace in full on "Blur." Yet with each listen, I find myself fast-forwarding more and more through another track oozing with "quirky" character sketches. If I wanted character sketches from East London, I would have rented either "Long Good Friday" or something. Exhibit B: "Top Man"; infintely more annoying than "Ernold Same" though only just.

I'm confused by the show of support this album garners here, as a lot of people (Blur included if I'm not mistaken) have distanced themselves a great deal from it. I'm more content to listen to their first three albums than anything else, because they had everything to prove back then, but this is just going through the motions. Exhibit C: "He Thought Of Cars" is a re-hash of "This Is A Low".

I'll give it three stars (two for the music and a third for the packaging concept) but highly recommend their first three if you're looking for Blur's best.