The Great Escape: Blur's 1995 follow up to Parklife (Parklife!) and their true establishment in the mainstream. But is the album good?
So it's important to discuss context with this album, as any. This followed parklife, and preceded their self titled record, which contained their biggest song "song 2", colloquially known as "the woohoo song". But this album isn't a dud by any stretch.
The record opens with skittery synthesizers and brash guitars on "stereotypes" before Albarn launches into some pretty raunchy lyrics, with "They're on the lover's sofa, they're on the patio, and when the fun is over, watch themselves on video" and "she likes a man in uniform, he likes to wear it tight". The chorus is very very earwormy, and the track wraps itself up fairly succinctly at 3:10.
The next track, "country house" is also a pretty good track. It tells the story of a guy getting out the city and moving to the country (which is something blur has wrote about a whole lot) and the whole song doesn't really put a foot wrong. It ended up being Blur's first number one hit, narrowly beating out oasis, in a feud known as "the battle of britpop", that you can find out more about here.
"Best days", follows this, and it's pretty dreary and forgetable. After that, we get "charmless man", which is one of my favourite blur songs. The vocal melody on this track is super catchy, and despite again being something that blur has wrote about before, it's better here than before. After that we get "fade away" which might have my favourite chorus refrain on the whole record, if not for having somewhat forgetable verses, despite the cool horns.
After that the tracklist becomes intensely average. Aside from the universal, featuring a string riff I feel like I've heard a million times. Some of the guitar riffs are almost dead ringers for tracks off Parklife once you get into the second half of the record, with the chorus on "It could be you" being particulairly offensive. The hook on penultimate track "entertain me" is again pretty catchy, though.
Overall, the album feels like it could've done with some editing down from 15 tracks, it really doesn't need to nearly an hour long. But it definitely has some really good tracks, which have lingered in the minds of the public who remember the mid 90's. I'd say it's worth checking out if you enjoyed Parklife (the album) but it's probably not a great place to start with blur. But still a fine album.
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