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Blur
Think Tank
[Virgin; 2003]
Rating: 9.0
Thirty five years ago, while Mick and Keef injected the final doses of
Jack and junk into Beggars Banquet out in Los Angeles, Brian Jones sucked
a deep hit of kif and hopped a cab down the coast from Tangier to Larache
with engineer George Chkiantz and girlfriend Suki in tow. From Larache the
group hiked halfway up a mountain to the village of Jajouka, where for ages
masses of drummers pounded under a chorus of reed ripping rhaita players as
part of the Bou Jeloud ritual dance. Jones dreamed of expanding
the Stones' sound beyond their American roots influence. Easily bored, he'd
already exhausted sitar, vibraphone, dulcimer, and "the bloody marimbas"
(as Keith called them) two years earlier on Aftermath.
As Jones' health famously sagged along with the bags under his eyes, The
Rolling Stones found less and less use for his experiments. "Moroccan
drums" pop up on "Midnight Rambler", but the band would never hike that
mountain for the elusive Jajouka fusion. That is, not until they mattered
little, in the late 80s, for "Continental Drift", a cut hidden deep in the
career nadir of Steel Wheels. By then, looking to Africa for a muse had
become AOR cliche, thanks to Paul Simon and Sting. Even the derided Paul
McCartney overcame bubblegum balladry for Band on the Run, recorded in
Lagos amidst studio shortcomings and legendary knife-point muggings.
Which brings us to Blur and their long-developed Think Tank, recorded in
Morocco without founding guitar icon Graham Coxon. Rock 'n' roll precedent
begs certain questions. Will the loss of Coxon equate to the loss of Brian
Jones (or Mick Taylor) or a hypothetical loss of Keith Richards? Will
Think Tank be another Cut the Crap, The Final Cut, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde,
Carl and the Passions (So Tough), Good Stuff, And Then There Were Three,
Wake of the Flood, Mag Earwig, Stranded, One Hot Minute, Face
Dances, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Other Voices, Squeeze, Muse
Sick-N-Hour Mess Age, Ultra, Drama, Slow Buildings, Road Hawks, Now and
Them, or Chinese Democracy? Or more along the lines of Sticky Fingers,
Back in Black, XTRMNTR, Adore, Up, In the Studio, Movement, Everything
Must Go, Soft Bulletin, Power, Corruption & Lies, First Step, Damaged,
Green Mind, This Is Hardcore, Coming Up, Full House, and ...And Justice
for All?
With the exception of a year back in 1995, Blur have never rested on
their laurels. Unlike their peers, they've delivered each album dipped in
a drastic new element while keeping a consistent melodic heart. Albarn has
always taken his shots, and thirteen years on seems to savor the challenge.
Take, for instance, 2002's Mali Music, his rich, ethereal solo equivalent
to Brian Jones' The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka: not content to simply document
the musical heritage of the locals, Albarn stepped in alongside
Afel Bocoum, proteg?to Ali Farka Toure, humming his melodica during
Niger-side jams and later reassembling the results in London as a montage
of British-pop sensibilities with post-production special effects and punches
of guitar, bass, and keyboard. The ambience and dust of the Malian excursion
settles heavily over Think Tank, and notably, Albarn seems to have picked up
more guitar skills from Bocoum than Coxon. The majestic, snaking "Out of Time"
relies less on the lugubrious, Gibraltar-docked solo
than the vast, four-dimensional environment surrounding it. One gets the
sense that even if Graham Coxon had caught the flight to Marrakesh, Think
Tank wouldn't have turned out much different.
Of course, all this focus on Damon and Graham discredits Alex James and Dave
Rowntree, who really push Think Tank through the sand. The two both preempted
the critics by perfectly describing the new music in interviews. James
claimed Think Tank "has hips," while Rowntree simply said it's most similar to
Parklife. James goes the furthest in giving Blur hips, beyond often posing
with his protruding-- with the focus off Coxon, his brilliant bass playing
will finally be seen as the vital element in Blur. It
gave "Girls and Boys", "Parklife", "Coffee and TV", and "Song 2" their
major hooks, while Graham hammered away on minimal riffs. If you're
air-playing anything along to those tracks, it's the air-bass you're
wriggling your index and middle fingers to. Likewise, Think Tank is laden
with creative bass leads.
"Brothers and Sisters" pounds along like contemporary Primal Scream
revisiting Screamadelica. While Damon twists away like the Konda Bongo
Man on guitar and hammers "Rockit" Hancock keyboard blurts, James freaks
out like a Funkadelic foray into post-punk on "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary
Bowls Club". Rowntree, meanwhile, switches between locking the beats into
motorik molds or loosens them up into Bou Jeloud punk. But Think Tank is
by no means "Blur gone dance" (ironically, the two Fatboy Slim songs,
"Crazy Beat" and "Gene by Gene", are, if anything, Clash-inspired)-- what
was "Girls and Boys" but a disco rock track seven years before it was
fashionable? Even "Battle", "People in Europe", "Death of a Party", "I'm
Just a Killer for Your Love", "Entertain Me", "On Your Own", and "London
Loves" used loops or drum machines.
Incidentally, despite my earlier, tenuous attempts to link Blur to the Stones
in some sort of sacred, afro-spiritual rock history, Blur worship more at
the altar of Bowie. The Bowie element has, of course, always been there,
from "Bugman" to "M.O.R."-- the latter emulated Lodger's "Boys Keep Swinging"
to such an extent that Bowie was given songwriting credit. Here it seems
that Albarn must idolize Lodger, in particular, as Think Tank follows the
overlooked album closely in spirit. In "Fantastic Voyage",
"African Night Flight", and "Yassassin", Bowie found a fractured, minimal
sound affected by Middle Eastern and African music without blindly throwing
a robe and bongo on while inviting Ladysmith Black Mambazo to sing. In
contrast "DJ" and "Boys Keep Swinging" offered jittery, pre-new wave
dance-rock.
Combat Rock, too, stands as an obvious parallel. "Car Jamming", "Straight
to Hell", and "Overpowered by Funk" inspire the most daring Think Tank
tracks-- "Me, White Noise" (with Phil Daniels standing in for Ginsberg),
"Jets", and "Ambulance". But, ah, remember Dave Rowntree saying this was like
Parklife. In basic sound, as you may have gathered, no. Parklife was
the defining BRITISH album of the 90s, ushering in an unintentional wave of
newly patriotic blokes who failed to see it as satire, like "Born
in the U.S.A." blaring at Reagan rallies. Likewise, Think Tank sounds like
Britain today-- a Britain where Panjabi MC's "Mundian to Bach Ke" and
Audio Bully's "We Don't Care" outchart Athlete's modernized Britpop. It
sounds like Notting Hill, where American media-skewed preconceptions are
both confirmed by the enormous white townhomes and shattered by the
multi-ethnic markets. Damon Albarn is more likely to find bootleg dancehall
CDs spread across a Pakistani carpet outside his Honest Jon's Records shop
than Heathen Chemistry.
Then again, Think Tank does sound like Parklife, as it contains Albarn's best
ballads since. "Sweet Song" plucks an echoing piano and rusty guitar under a
lake of pure, clear melody, and "Caravan" cracks like a last lament
transmitted from an imploding submarine on crunchy sonar pulses and
disintegrating guitar from a deep P.A. as Albarn announces, "You'll feel
the weight of it," before breaking the surface in dulcimer-drenched
sunshine. Oh, and Graham does pop up once, on "Battery in Your Leg",
which opens sounding eerily similar to Eno and Bowie's Berlin output before
Coxon makes his guitar twang like high tension wires snapping and erupts in
Saturn-rocket blasts.
Like being plopped down Morocco for the first time, or Covent Garden for
that matter, Think Tank takes some reorienting. To answer the questions
posed earlier, the album is laughably miles better than every album on the
first list, and surprisingly better than, or just as good as, every
single one on the other. But don't just judge it as an album by a band
coming off a major line-up change. You won't need to.
-Brent DiCrescenzo, May 6th, 2003