dotmusic THINK TANK review: 9分
http://www.dotmusic.com/reviews/Albums/April2003/reviews29200.asp
It's hard to come to a new Blur album without any baggage whatsoever
but 'Think Tank' is an album so focussed on music and the pleasure of
music that it requires the personalities standing behind it be put on
one side. Few bands have so frequently been victim of our need to find
the story behind the sounds they make and the words they sing as Blur.
Few have become so sullen and withdrawn as a consequence. As we've
watched they've twisted and turned their way in and out of musical
favour.
'Think Tank' arrives at a time when rock's margins have been desperately
narrowed by the glorification of its most crude and urgent forms, yet
it's an album that's perfectly out of time. As other established acts
with roots reaching beyond the current required reference points stumble,
Blur seem gloriously above it all. Perhaps it's another sign of Albarn's
sheer bloody-minded self-belief; perhaps it's all this unfashionable
(anti-fashion?) tampering with 'World Music'. The album implores us to
not even bother trying to answer the question.
As deftly as he has switched his presentation for each project, each
album, Albarn now switches musical styles and influences. It's a trait
that's often marked him out in the eyes of the media as a kind of musical
man of many faces, not to be trusted. But, there's no more spurious a
concept in music than 'authenticity' and no greater enemy of invention.
The freedom of invention brings with it a drawback: a hit and miss ratio
shared by all recent Albarn projects. Of all of them, 'Think Tank' is the
most musically whole, its flaws more obviously the artistic compromises
of a big, commercial band. Its triumphs, conversely, are wholly personal,
perhaps because - since Graham Coxon's departure - the toughest compromise
is no longer part of the equation.
At the core of the record are a handful of songs on which melody is so
exquisitely expressed through stripped, simple vocals and absolute
purity of sound and emotion that all concerns about the ego/egos behind
them become pointless. 'Caravan' plays on a simple resolution as the "la
la las" surface fantastically from the muzzy lo-fi production: like the
best song you ever heard your neighbour play bursting through your front
door in time for the chorus. The title of the most personal, 'Sweet Song',
implies the coolly detached construction of emotional effect, but it's at
odds with the confessional tone of the lyrics. 'Out Of Time' is of the
same genealogy and has already proved a gloriously un-compromised Top 5
single.
The temptation is to see these as some of the most honest and direct songs
that Damon Albarn has ever written. Each one is a frozen moment of human
warmth, an experience of nature captured in sound, a timeless song.
'Battery In Your Leg' is a darker, more mournful proposition. Ravaged by
Coxon's only contribution to the album, a chilling vortex of sound with
steely, tumbling notes echoing at its centre. Elsewhere, the hit and miss
ratio throws up the partially successful ('Brothers And Sisters', 'Jets'),
some great pop songs ('Gene By Gene', 'Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls
Club'), genuinely exciting experiments (hidden track 'My White Noise' and
'On The Way To The Club') and the commercially compromised (the cheap
thrill of 'Crazy Beat').
Theory will rage on as to whose songs these are, fuelled by their immense
personality, which is at odds with the perverse unwillingness of their
apparent creative source to show us any of his own. What matters, though,
is that Blur continue to shout "la, la, la, la" as all around try to tell
them what they ought to be doing. They no longer give a shit what you think,
there's nothing to be scared of. They've made a mature and, occasionally
beautiful album, possibly the finest of their career.
9/10
James Poletti
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.csie.ntu.edu.tw)
◆ From: 61.70.206.23
Blur 近期熱門文章
PTT偶像團體區 即時熱門文章
