Blur, Clearly / Blur Profile - May 2003

Blur - the boys who like girls who do boys like they're girls who do boys finally grow up.

As I sit, hung-over and roasting in the Palm Springs sun, waiting for the three remaining members of Blur - Damon Albarn, Alex James, and Dave Rowntree - to join me poolside, I can't help but remember the last time that I saw them in person. The year was 1995 and at the time Blur was poised to become perhaps the biggest rock band in the world. Having just released The Great Escape and still riding high on the breakout success of their previous album, Parklife, (with it's gender-bending hit "girls and boys") the band played an enthusiastic set to a tiny crowd in a sweaty club in Dallas, Texas. The band, who were already international celebrities and million-selling artists overseas, seemed a bit dismayed to be playing such a small venue in the US, but nevertheless at the time seemed poised for total global domination. Little did they, or anyone, know that the battle of the UK bands would soon be won by a little group of hooligans called Oasis. So, while the rest of the world sang along to "wonderwall", Blur quietly retreated to various points about the globe, and would later re-emerge, shedding the poster boy image of their past and embracing a scrappier, experimental sound. And now, nearly 8 years and three albums later, the band who sits down with me under a giant beach umbrella bear little resemblance to the band I saw play all those years ago.

Blur are in California to play the Coachella Music Festival in support of their astonishing new record, Think Tank, and I am here to talk to them about it. After listening to the band for nearly 14 years, it's a strange and surreal experience to see the boys come ambling over to the table, disheveled and having just been awakened themselves.

Damon Albarn, Blur's doe-eyed lead singer and the usual mouthpiece of the group, nibbles at a plate of fruit and considers how Think Tank came to be. Of the new album, Albarn says that, while it was in some ways the hardest record they've ever made, it was also the easiest. "It took a year to make and it was a long, long journey, but there's an ease and playfulness to the recording that we haven't really had since the very first recordings that we ever did. It was all very back to basics," he explains. The long process of making the album also included the departure of founding guitarist Graham Coxon, an absence that caused many to worry just what the future sound of Blur would actually be. Alex James, the group's affable bassist, insists that this was never the big deal that people made it out to be. "We had all of these great people to work with on the record, I never really saw it as a lack of Graham. We just turn up, plug things in, and we goŠand we hope that Damon has done some songwriting first." Luckily, Damon had indeed done some songwriting first. In this case, he had already done some of his most eclectic songwriting to date.

Think Tank is, perhaps, the most interesting and sonically adventurous thing that Blur has ever done. This might be due, at least in part, to the production work of Ben Hilliier and Norman Cook (yes,Fatboy Slim himself), but it's also a like result of Damon Albarn's recent forays into world music (Mali Music) and hip-hoppy electronica (Gorillaz, anyone?). However, Blur has a history of doing things their own way. A brief look at their back catalog reveals a band seemingly unafraid to experiment, whether it be to take on arch British classism, American indie guitar rock, the electronic blips of European dance music or dubby world music, all of these various influences are filtered throughout Think Tank.

America has a tendency to ignore bands like Blur, whose very British sensibilities are often lost on US audiences. They scored a minor hit in with "girls and boys", but never managed to break in the states like more straightforward rockers like Oasis or even, (god help us), Bush did. It wasn't until the release of "Song 2",that America seemed to stand up and take notice. In fact, the US government loved that song so much that they asked to use it to advertise a new stealth bomber, (Blur declined). As for visiting America now, Damon says, "It really feels like it's the right place to be now. It always felt so incongruous being here and being soŠBritish. To our sensibility we weren't all that "British" seeming, but I can see in hindsight now that we really wereŠwe were British on an almost "monty python" level."

And what about that famous feud with Oasis? "It's taken a really long time and a lot of hard work to get to a point where I don't really have to say anything more about it," Damon says, "and thank god, because the last thing I want to spend the rest of my life doing is justifying myself in the context of Oasis." And besides, the guys are more grown up now - Older, wiser, married, and, in Damon's case, a father. It only makes sense then that the band would now be making the most mature, fully-realized music of their careers, they have, after all, been doing this together for 14 years now. Equally impressive is the fact that, while always remaining a million-selling band, Blur have retained their sense of play, making seven records that have all been interestingly different, playing up to their strengths without repeating themselves, and managing to sidestep the slow slide into mediocrity that has plagued so many of their contemporaries, including, for instance, Oasis.

Eventually, the band head off, shoeless and unshaven, to take a few photos before heading out to the festival. They are charming and amiable, taking a few minutes to chat about poetry before filing away from the pool. Later that day I watch them tear through their set, a mix of the beautiful, spaced-out new material peppered with a few of the big hits. The sweating masses "woo-hoo" along with 'Song 2' and as the sun begins to set over the California desert, I watch as the band launch into "boys and girls" and a huge heaving, hopping mass of people lose their minds. Damon Albarn leaps into the air like a spastic fifteen year old and suddenly I feel a bit like a teenager myself. It's almost like 1995 all over again.

Blur plays the Field Day Music Festival in Calverton, New York on June 8. www.fielddayfest.com

Think Tank is in stores now.

- T. Cole Rachel