“The battling Gallagher brothers” – according to every tabloid newspaper in the land – are set to dominate headlines again this summer when the Oasis reunion rolls in with the inexorable precision of a military exercise to take up residence in the stadiums and enormodomes across the world.
Before that, a pause is called for to consider a time before their entrance and the codification of Britpop, to when their future chart rivals, Blur, were grappling with the concept of Englishness in the face of grunge’s domination and their own potential demise.
Chastened by indifference to their gruelling and disastrous 44-date tour of the USA in the spring of 1992, the domestic failure of standalone single Popscene, and the very real prospect of being dropped by their label, Blur sobered up long enough to stage a fight back against America’s cultural hegemony with a change of image. They jettisoned their unconvincing baggy flares for sharper sartorial wares while suffusing their music with an approach that could only have come from British shores.
The result was Modern Life Is Rubbish. While much has been made of the influence of The Kinks’ Ray Davies and the long shadows cast by Victorian music halls, less attention is paid to the debt owed to a cast that includes the very English eccentricity of Syd Barrett, Kevin Ayers’s lugubriousness, the raucous delivery of Peter Hammill’s Nadir’s Big Chance and Robert Fripp’s pioneering approach to the guitar.
The music that drives the album is anything but linear or straightforward
And though the initial sessions with XTC’s Andy Partridge in the producer’s chair came to naught, Blur’s second album is, at the very least, dusted with the spirit of prog.
The band members were still in their early 20s, but Modern Life Is Rubbish is the product of educated and perceptive artists. While singer Damon Albarn’s lyrics are both a celebration and critique of contemporary British life via a number of character studies – see Chemical World’s despondent raver and the pomposity that beats at the heart of Colin Zeal – the music that drives the album is anything but linear or straightforward as it mirrors the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of English life.
It’s there in the disorientating Pressure On Julian as Graham Coxon’s woozy guitar rejects the orthodoxies of what's expected from his instrument, in much the same way Syd Barrett did. Indeed, Coxon’s inventive playing throughout – witness the unconventional break during Coping – highlights his first steps to his destination as one the most unique guitarists of his generation.
Add to this the imaginative rhythm section of bassist Alex James and drummer of Dave Rowntree, who enhance this sense of unease. They don’t so much hold things down as create a see-sawing base on which the music balances precariously.
An intelligent album subsequently misinterpreted by lesser talents, it’s one deserving of another look from another angle.
