The path to Alex James Britpop Classical

Believe it or not, there was a rock band before there was ALEX JAMES BRITPOP CLASSICAL!!!!!!! and that band was called Blur.

I had a thought about Blur (when I could tear my mind away from ALEX! JAMES! BRITPOP! CLASSICAL!) which was that, slightly surprisingly, my favourite Blur album is now Think Tank.

Think Tank is the seventh of nine Blur studio albums, and, although (thankfully) there have been two Blur albums since, this is their break-up album, the sound of a band on its last legs, the two key members divided, the glory years long gone.

Think Tank is not the only sad Blur album about the end of things, of course. It is a funny thing about this band, so far from their tabloid image, that Blur, 13, Think Tank and The Ballad of Darren, are all, to an extent, about the end of an era, and even Parklife, their prime "Britpop" album, contains To the End, End of a Century, This is a Low and Badhead - songs about ends and/or feeling bad.

I'll take a little detour from talking just about Blur to talking about Britpop in general, which will lead back to Think Tank. As much as I'm quite defensive when the usual criticisms of Britpop recur, it's also true that ... I don't really listen to it. It's not actually the music I like to listen to, and hasn't been for a long time. I think there were an unusual number of excellent indie-guitar bands of that era, many of whom I have considerable fondness for, but it's not the Britpop of theirs that I'd listen to. Like, what are the classic Britpop songs?

• Parklife, Girls and Boys, Country House
• Common People, Disco 2000
• Alright
• Cigarettes and Alcohol, Live Forever
• Trash and Beautiful Ones
• Wake Up Boo
• Waking Up
• Slight Return
• Great Things
• Fine Time
• Female of the Species
• Good Enough
• Daydreamer
• Inbetweener

A few nice memories, but not sure the last time I chose to listen to any of those...

Blur were the first of those bands for me, in some ways they're the definition of Britpop, and they're the one I still love the most, but the reason I still love them so much is precisely how quickly and how far they moved away from it.

Think Tank is probably the Blur album that sounds least like Blur - for obvious reasons, mainly that Graham Coxon only plays on one track. Actually The Good, the Bad and the Queen, from 2007, sounds a lot more, thematically, like a Blur album than Think Tank (that is another album I realise I love quite a lot now).

I liked it when it came out, but have grown to love it. It's interesting for a few reasons. It's the first Blur album after Gorillaz had success, and after the Mali Music album, so the first time Blur was just one Damon Albarn project, not the Damon Albarn project. With Graham's absence, there is more contribution from Dave and Alex, both in terms of composition and background vocals. There is more acoustic guitar, less lead guitar. There are more drum loops and world music influences. Although there is the trauma and sadness of Coxon's absence, this is Albarn near the start of the long-term relationship he'd be in for the two decades. In short, this is the closest he ever gets to sounding like a nice, normal person on an album. 

By which I mean, no shade, there are several really lovely, endearing songs on this. I've always loved Battery in Your Leg (the song about Coxon that Coxon actually plays on) - there's Good Song and Sweet Song, which really are those things (I think Sweet Song is one of my all-time favourite Blur songs). On the Way to the Club is also a subtle beauty, and then there's the single Out of Time, which gets better and better with age, and leads the anti-war theme of the album. I always felt with 13, this album's predecessor, that I wanted to love it, but it just didn't hold on to enough tunes and lyrics - it just didn't have enough "song" for someone like me, whereas Think Tank carries on the path away from Parklife, but remembers to have more actual song.

For years, I've loathed Crazy Beat, the second single, the botched attempt to do another Song 2, or Girls and Boys, produced by Norman Cook, but now, in the context of the album, I almost like how botched it is, as if the whole purpose is to say "this is not what this band is" ... well, there's a spin ...

Blur are a very different band after The Great Escape - imagine if their first album had been Blur, how differently the world would look on them. Don't get me wrong, when I go see the monster stadium act BLUR what I want is To the End and The Universal and For Tomorrow and This is a Low and Popscene, and, fuck it, Country House, but, to me, the reason Blur are the greatest British band of their era is because of Blur, Think Tank and The Ballad of Darren (I like The Magic Whip as well, certainly the second half of it, and think 13 is a nobler failure than The Great Escape is).

Albarn's prolificity this century is quite something - three Africa Express albums, two GBQ, two solo, two operas, one musical, I'd even forgotten there was Rocket Juice and the Moon as well. Oh yes, and eight albums and several EPs by one of the biggest dance/hip-hop acts in the world. 

My favourite of all that is still Blur, and I sure hope there's a 10th Blur album to cap it all - to celebrate, returning to Alex James Britpop Classical, that a band can still be triumphant whilst having the most truly embarrassing grifter of a bassist any band could possibly have, but anyway, here's a 60-song Albarn compilation, which I think has a pretty dizzying level of quality and range.

1. Ascension - Gorillaz ft Vince Staples
2. Song 2 - Blur
3. Sunset Coming On - Mali Music
4. For Tomorrow - Blur
5. There's No Other Way - Blur
6. The Narcissist - Blur
7. On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz
8. On the Way to the Club - Blur
9. 19/2000 - Gorillaz
10. Young and Lovely - Blur
11. Apple Carts - Damon Albarn
12. The Nearer the Mountain, the Purer the Stream - Damon Albarn
13. Badhead - Blur
14. Good Song - Blur
15. Dirty Harry - Gorillaz
16. Photographs (You Are Taking Now) - Damon Albarn
17. Trimm Trabb - Blur
18. End of a Century - Blur
19. 80s Life - The Good the Bad and the Queen
20. Sweet Song - Blur
21. He Thought of Cars - Blur
22. Oil - Gorillaz ft Stevie Nicks
23. Superfast Jellyfish - Gorillaz ft Gruff Rhys and De la Soul
24. Yuko and Hiro - Blur
25. Under the Westway - Blur
26. Soldier's Tale - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
27. Everyday Robots - Damon Albarn
28. Best Days - Blur
29. Silent Running - Gorillaz
30. On Your Own - Blur
31. Heavy Seas of Love - Damon Albarn
32. Sunday Sunday - Blur
33. Poison - Rocket Juice and the Moon
34. Herculean - The Good the Bad and the Queen
35. Andromeda - Gorillaz
36. Popscene - Blur
37. Cracker Island - Gorillaz
38. Merrie Land - The Good the Bad and the Queen
39. Chemical World - Blur
40. Beetlebum - Blur
41. We Got the Power - Gorillaz ft Jehnny Beth and Noel Gallagher
42. This is a Low - Blur
43. Rock the House - Gorillaz
44. Momentary Bliss - Gorillaz
45. The Universal - Blur
46. Ong Ong - Blur
47. Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz ft De la Soul
48. Tender - Blur
49. Goodbye Albert - Blur
50. Barbaric - Blur
51. Northern Whale - The Good the Bad and the Queen
52. Skinny Ape - Gorillaz
53. Pyongyang - Blur
54. The Universal - Blur
55. Let Me Out - Gorillaz ft Mavis Staples and Pusha T
56. The Heights - Blur
57. Death of the Party - Blur
58. Battery in Your Leg - Blur
59. Out of Time - Blur
60. To the End - Blur ft Francoise Hardy

10 Books

Having not read much for the previous couple of years, I determined, in summer of 2018, to read as many short novels as I could. Somehow or other, in the first year, I managed 70 (don't even know how that happened). It settled down after that, and I've found it harder to read quickly since my eyesight started to deteriorate, amongst other time-stealing factors, but I am still managing to have a book on the go all the time, and am managing to get through 15+ a year, which I'm happy with. I am also glad that I don't give up on a book. Maybe sometimes it would be a good idea, but I've stuck with every single one I've picked up in this period. 

So, I thought I'd write a paragraph or two about 10 of my favourites from these seven years of reading. I wouldn't say these will be reviews so much as attempts to remember how the books made me feel.

Firstly ...

Autumn - Ali Smith

Like other Ali Smith books, Autumn invites you into a world of words, ideas and arts - in this case, the central real-life figure is the (then) little-known pop artist Pauline Boty. [each of the books in the Seasons tetralogy revolves around a Shakespeare play and a female artist].This was the first Ali Smith book I'd read, and, though I am now more used to her style, this book rather swept me off my feet. As a writer she gives you a lot but doesn't demand all that much in return. The sentences flow, the quirky jokes keep coming, the type is big and easy (I like big type!). You learn a lot and you feel comforted. I can sometimes feel a bit uncertain about books that are this easy and enjoyable to read, and perhaps the three other season books fell victim to that in my mind. But I have rarely felt such a giddy thrill, from good humour, anger, learning, storytelling, as with this book.

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

I read it this year, having read The Sound and the Fury more than 10 years ago. TSATF has 4 sections - the first is so (deliberately) impenetrable that, truthfully, although I ended up getting to grips with the book, my memory of it is still a bit tainted by my initial uncomprehending... fury. I am just not sure anything should be so utterly impossible to grasp in the moment.

As I Lay Dying was written a year later, in 1930. I loved it. I found it a strangely blissful read. There are unreliable and confused narrators, certainly, and you don't really add everything up until the end, but you're always in the game! It's a beautiful, sad, tale, seems like it's years ahead of its time.

The Green Road - Anne Enright

I read this in the week before the first lockdown, at the start of March 2020, so obviously my head was full of BIG THOUGHTS at the time. This is one of my favourite novels ever, if not my favourite. It is an Irish family saga - there's an aged parent and four children who are then, in the middle section separately, and in the later section together, adults. Clearly I had some investment.

There is a section focussing on (or starting with) one of the grown-up sons living in New York during the AIDS crisis, which could stand alone from the rest of the novel, and is, I felt at the time, the work of a writer possessed, consumed by genius. Enright is always a stylish writer - the first book I read by her 'The Forgotten Waltz', I felt a bit like the intensity of the writing overwhelmed the paucity of the story, and. though I've ended up liking all the rest of her novels, there's nothing else that has hit me as hard as The Green Road, in particular that section of The Green Road - I somewhat think that might be the greatest thing I've ever read.

Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead

This was the novel Colson Whitehead wrote after winning the Pulitzer twice in succession, for 'The Underground Railroad', which I haven't read, then 'Nickel Boys', which I have. Those are (I presume of the first and know of the second) pretty heavy books.

Harlem Shuffle is, on the other hand, a hoot. One of the most enjoyable books I've read - a piece of crime fiction set in New York in the early 60s, with a hero you root for and villains who are only a bit villainous. I think my tendency seems to be to choose books that end up being a bit unsettling, but every now and then it's nice to read something that is both brilliantly written and not unsettling at all.

Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban

I read several contemporary Russell Hoban novels in my twenties. I enjoyed them. They were funny and light and rude. In fact, they had a lot in common with Ali Smith - there was usually a piece of art at the centre, and there was a delight in playing with language. 

Knowing Hoban's son as I did/do, Wieland would sometimes roll his eyes when I mentioned I'd enjoyed his dad's latest book and say, you should read his earlier stuff, that's much more substantial. I'd tried Riddley Walker first, though, and not got past the first couple of pages. I finally committed to read it in 2019. It is, strangely, a masterpiece, one of the greatest books ever written, entirely the work of a writer possessed, with a depth of storytelling and prophesy and wit, skill in language, darkness and beauty, that I have come across in very few other places. It is also, funnily enough, set in a post-apocalyptic eastern Kent which is where I live right now! Boom-tish!

August is a Wicked Month - Edna O'Brien

I didn't think, at the time, that this was one of my favourites, but it has stayed with me. It is the first novel she wrote after The Country Girls trilogy which began her career with a bang. It also, like them, feels pretty semi-autobiographical - indeed, one of the funniest things is the lead character meeting a Hollywood actor on the French riviera who I could just tell was meant to be Robert Mitchum, and then you google Edna O'Brien Robert Mitchum...

Anyway, what strikes me about this book, very much like the last of the Country Girls books, Girls in Their Married Bliss, is how very sad they made me feel at the end. Rather like Y Tu Mama Tambien, this book just pulled the rug away and that feeling had not really left me.

The Heat of the Day - Elizabeth Bowen

I was given this dark, misanthropic wartime thriller set in a strangely recognisable London, where no one is treated all that kindly by the author. I was struck by how much confidence Bowen had in her sentence construction. I would get halfway through a vast half-page flowing sequence of words and worry that she'd forgotten the main verb, and then there it would be when you needed it most. I don't think I'm a man who, on average, is interested in the First or Second World War, but they sure do have a lot of great novels about them.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

A lot of people write a lot of different things, and you can't necessarily tell much about an author by what they write, but, hey, let's make an exception, it's clear to tell from Blood Meridian that Cormac McCarthy was a depraved man ... well, at the time, apparently, this was his transitional novel as from this point on his novels had more morality and beauty, and that is certainly true of All the Pretty Horses and The Road, later books I'd already read. In this book, like in the Simon and Garfunkel song, they've all gone to look for America and what they find is not so nice. 

Apparently, the unfilmable novel is finally being filmed. 

Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry, Night Boat to Tangier - Kevin Barry

Two for the price of one - both by (unrelated) Irish Barrys. I read a disproportionate number of novels by Irish people - there are a disproportionate number of excellent Irish novelists, and, I guess, I just like the territory. Old God's Time is a beautiful novel, very much in the world that a lot of Irish novels are in - the church, child abuse, history, memory. S Barry's Days Without End (set in a similar America to Blood Meridian) is also a beautiful novel. K Barry's books are hilarious - Night Boat to Tangier is also about history and memory, but it's funny as hell and like a gangster's Waiting for Godot.

Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers - Ryan O'Neill

And, finally, this masterpiece. If I ever wrote a work of fiction, I would want it to be like this, and in a way, I think, I'd have my best shot of writing something in this vein - just having one silly idea and running with it all the way, creating this fabulously fact-based alternative reality, full of detail and history and names and faux-solemnity.

I would recommend this book above all others. It's the Inside Number 9 of 21st century novels.