My Year in Albums- Part 1- Modern Life is Rubbish
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Artist:
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Album:
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Track:Colin
Okay, so, music is a big part of my life. As a matter of fact, music has helped me through some bad periods, made me more euphoric about good times, and with quite many a song, band, or album there are connotations, for better or worse.Therefore, I decided to draw up my year by album. Which is as simple as that I review the album that is my favourite of the week, for whatever reason which, obviously, I’m not going to reveal here. ;) Also, sometimes there’s more to it, so don’t start speculating on my depressions or highs because normally, you can’t. ;)This week, my most played album, “Modern Life is Rubbish” by BlurStar Rating for the songs:For Tomorrow- ****Advert- ****Colin Zeal- *****Pressure on Julian- ***Star Shaped- ***Blue Jeans- ****Chemical World- ***Sunday Sunday- ****Oily Water- **Miss America- *****Villa Rosie- ***Coping- ****Turn it Up- ****Resigned- ****
The album starts of with “For Tomorrow”, a song that is the perfect opener to ease into it. Not excessively loud, not excessively slow, but a reasonable paced song that, in the mean time, tells you what this album will be about, namely that modern life is rubbish. It says so much already in the very first lines of the song “He's a twentieth century boy, with his hands on the rails/Trying not to be sick again and holding on for tomorrow”. It feels like he’s saying “no, I’m not okay, this world is f*cked up and I just don’t feel I belong here, but lets see if we can make tomorrow all right”. The “lalala’ sing along line is inviting, “join me in making tomorrow better, and lets start today, with singing together”. In the end Albarn sings/talks through the lalala’s, making for a change in tone. The music is easy on the ear, simple drum line, and the song is aided by violins on the background. After that, “Advert”, starting with a quick piano line before the band barges in with a more punk like, and definitely harder, sound. It seems to take the piss out of the routine of life, and the media, forcing stuff upon people in a consumer driven world where pain is “fixed” by shopping. “Colin Zeal” is one of the highlights of the album. Starting with a bass line, followed by guitar, and with seemingly hand clapping on the background they take a shot at, well, assholes really. People who think they’ve made it and look down on others who, in their eyes, haven’t. With their perfect outfit, good job, living by the rules, smart looks, “knowledge” of current world affairs; they think they’re so smart, while in fact, the real world is lost on them. The repeated line “He’s pleased with himself, he’s pleased with himself, he’s so pleased with himself ah-ha” is sung with much disdain, but moreover it’s delicious to sing along to and sticks in the mind. “Pressure on Julian” starts a on the heavy hand compared to a lot of the rest of the album. After that the fairly paced “Star Shaped”, which leaves the more punk-ish guitars behind and returns to the feel of opener “For Tomorrow”. “Blue Jeans” is more low key, and a hidden gem of the album. The song is about life being routine, doing the same things day in day out, nothing that challenges the mind or the person, people sagging in. There’s a bit of melancholy in the song. I can’t make up my mind whether or not it’s saying “well, life is nothing spectacular, and I know you don’t very much care about me, but as long as I’m with you, life stays this way, and even though nothing really happens or makes me real enthusiastic, I’m content”, or that it is criticizing it and is really saying “get of your lazy arses and make something”. Maybe it’s real theme is about the fear of change, in both ways. On one hand the fear of changing stuff yourself if you are already “content” but feel there’s more, or the fear that something is about to change taking your being content and easy life away.For the next song “Chemical World” the guitars blow you away, and the strong guitars are sometimes intervened by a quiet tune, just to pick up again in a sort of headbang mode. Again, an attack on materialism and how it’ll only temporarily “fix” you. Luckily, after the heavy guitars, we have a piano intermission. Drums are the intro of the second part of the album with “Sunday Sunday”, and during the song there is an interplay with multiple instruments to go frenzy on. “Oily Waters” seemingly is misplaced here. The strange vocals appear out of nowhere, and for some reason it feels preachy and forced. “I swallowed too much oily water” is perhaps the most bland and generic sentence on the whole album. The ending instrumentals seem overblown as well. Then the atmospherical “Miss America” comes in. Low key and melancholic, the song floats through the air putting down exactly the right atmosphere. Biblical reference with Jemina, which means giving love and tenderness and that, after hard times, there’s hope. The chorus of “I don't mind/I don't mind at all/I love only you” is beautiful and very sad at the same time, because you get the feeling she doesn’t love him back in that way, also illustrated by the last bit “Here is here and I am here/Where are you?”. The singer seems to be looking for a tenderness he can not have. And maybe he tries to fix it with a hooker or with generic sex, mistaking it for real love. Because I always get the sense there’s a prostitute involved somewhere in these lyrics. The band wake you up out of that melancholic world with a loud awakening on “Villa Rosie”, after which they settle for the tune itself, which is quite pleasant, with sometimes a bit of the hard stuff in between. There is a sort of escapism in both the song and the lyrics. The guitar strikes a couple of simple chords before Albarn sings in a quick pace the first paragraph, easing it down in the second, to sing-along in the chorus line, and repeating that pace change throughout the song. Maybe one of the most striking lines of the whole album is “And I'm too tired to care about it”. A guitar effect followed by a hard guitar line introduces us to “Turn it Up”, before settling down a bit. This song is probably the best sing-along song on this album, very friendly to that. “Some days it all gets too much” is probably something people are eager to shout along to as well. The finale on the album, “Resigned”, is also the perfect ending of the album (and why they put that idiotic commercial break behind it I’ll never know). The melancholy in Albarn’s voice hits the lyrics really home. The instruments, in the mean time, seem to say “but heck, what can you do about it?”. Modern Life is Rubbish eh, we just have to cope with it, and maybe someday, who knows, we won’t be the strange ones thinking strange things, but we have changed the world to a place that fits us better. Lyrically and musically, a top notch album, and a modern classic by Blur, I can heartily recommend it. Contemporary tales of dissatisfaction are the common theme, yet the songs all sound significantly different, some harder and more punk (without really going off, not an album you can go pogoing on), others low key and more melancholic, yet you always can tell it belongs together.For Tomorrow Clip:
The album starts of with “For Tomorrow”, a song that is the perfect opener to ease into it. Not excessively loud, not excessively slow, but a reasonable paced song that, in the mean time, tells you what this album will be about, namely that modern life is rubbish. It says so much already in the very first lines of the song “He's a twentieth century boy, with his hands on the rails/Trying not to be sick again and holding on for tomorrow”. It feels like he’s saying “no, I’m not okay, this world is f*cked up and I just don’t feel I belong here, but lets see if we can make tomorrow all right”. The “lalala’ sing along line is inviting, “join me in making tomorrow better, and lets start today, with singing together”. In the end Albarn sings/talks through the lalala’s, making for a change in tone. The music is easy on the ear, simple drum line, and the song is aided by violins on the background. After that, “Advert”, starting with a quick piano line before the band barges in with a more punk like, and definitely harder, sound. It seems to take the piss out of the routine of life, and the media, forcing stuff upon people in a consumer driven world where pain is “fixed” by shopping. “Colin Zeal” is one of the highlights of the album. Starting with a bass line, followed by guitar, and with seemingly hand clapping on the background they take a shot at, well, assholes really. People who think they’ve made it and look down on others who, in their eyes, haven’t. With their perfect outfit, good job, living by the rules, smart looks, “knowledge” of current world affairs; they think they’re so smart, while in fact, the real world is lost on them. The repeated line “He’s pleased with himself, he’s pleased with himself, he’s so pleased with himself ah-ha” is sung with much disdain, but moreover it’s delicious to sing along to and sticks in the mind. “Pressure on Julian” starts a on the heavy hand compared to a lot of the rest of the album. After that the fairly paced “Star Shaped”, which leaves the more punk-ish guitars behind and returns to the feel of opener “For Tomorrow”. “Blue Jeans” is more low key, and a hidden gem of the album. The song is about life being routine, doing the same things day in day out, nothing that challenges the mind or the person, people sagging in. There’s a bit of melancholy in the song. I can’t make up my mind whether or not it’s saying “well, life is nothing spectacular, and I know you don’t very much care about me, but as long as I’m with you, life stays this way, and even though nothing really happens or makes me real enthusiastic, I’m content”, or that it is criticizing it and is really saying “get of your lazy arses and make something”. Maybe it’s real theme is about the fear of change, in both ways. On one hand the fear of changing stuff yourself if you are already “content” but feel there’s more, or the fear that something is about to change taking your being content and easy life away.For the next song “Chemical World” the guitars blow you away, and the strong guitars are sometimes intervened by a quiet tune, just to pick up again in a sort of headbang mode. Again, an attack on materialism and how it’ll only temporarily “fix” you. Luckily, after the heavy guitars, we have a piano intermission. Drums are the intro of the second part of the album with “Sunday Sunday”, and during the song there is an interplay with multiple instruments to go frenzy on. “Oily Waters” seemingly is misplaced here. The strange vocals appear out of nowhere, and for some reason it feels preachy and forced. “I swallowed too much oily water” is perhaps the most bland and generic sentence on the whole album. The ending instrumentals seem overblown as well. Then the atmospherical “Miss America” comes in. Low key and melancholic, the song floats through the air putting down exactly the right atmosphere. Biblical reference with Jemina, which means giving love and tenderness and that, after hard times, there’s hope. The chorus of “I don't mind/I don't mind at all/I love only you” is beautiful and very sad at the same time, because you get the feeling she doesn’t love him back in that way, also illustrated by the last bit “Here is here and I am here/Where are you?”. The singer seems to be looking for a tenderness he can not have. And maybe he tries to fix it with a hooker or with generic sex, mistaking it for real love. Because I always get the sense there’s a prostitute involved somewhere in these lyrics. The band wake you up out of that melancholic world with a loud awakening on “Villa Rosie”, after which they settle for the tune itself, which is quite pleasant, with sometimes a bit of the hard stuff in between. There is a sort of escapism in both the song and the lyrics. The guitar strikes a couple of simple chords before Albarn sings in a quick pace the first paragraph, easing it down in the second, to sing-along in the chorus line, and repeating that pace change throughout the song. Maybe one of the most striking lines of the whole album is “And I'm too tired to care about it”. A guitar effect followed by a hard guitar line introduces us to “Turn it Up”, before settling down a bit. This song is probably the best sing-along song on this album, very friendly to that. “Some days it all gets too much” is probably something people are eager to shout along to as well. The finale on the album, “Resigned”, is also the perfect ending of the album (and why they put that idiotic commercial break behind it I’ll never know). The melancholy in Albarn’s voice hits the lyrics really home. The instruments, in the mean time, seem to say “but heck, what can you do about it?”. Modern Life is Rubbish eh, we just have to cope with it, and maybe someday, who knows, we won’t be the strange ones thinking strange things, but we have changed the world to a place that fits us better. Lyrically and musically, a top notch album, and a modern classic by Blur, I can heartily recommend it. Contemporary tales of dissatisfaction are the common theme, yet the songs all sound significantly different, some harder and more punk (without really going off, not an album you can go pogoing on), others low key and more melancholic, yet you always can tell it belongs together.For Tomorrow Clip:
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