Customer Reviews

The Great Escape

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For their fourth outing, 1995's "The Great Escape," Blur wonderfully combine the successes of their previous two albums, "Modern Life is Rubbish" and "Parklife." This last piece of their fan dubbed "Life Trilogy" is the darkest material they have explored and the most musically over the top. Huge production, stings, horns, and electronica all mix with their trademark witty Britpop.

"Country House," Blur's first #1 single (beating out Oasis' "Roll With It" in a much hyped band war) is a startling song about the drudging, depressed life of a millionaire in his country house. It's upbeat tempo carefully masks the dark tale that sings "Blow Blow me out I am so sad I don't know why."

The centerpiece of the album is the simply bigger than life "The Universal." The song is virtually a lullabye with orchestration, and Damon Albarn's gentle voice echoing over and over "Yes it really, really, really could happen." It's darkness shows itself after several listens with lines like "The future has been sold," and minor key staccato violins.

"Yuko & Hiro" the last track of the album (aside from a brief hidden instrumental reprise of "Ernold Same") is a beautiful electronic song describing the longing between an overworked Japanese couple. The story, perhaps inspired by Albarn's own relationship with Elastica's Justine Frischmann, is the first hint that Blur will leave Britpop, a musical genre they helped to create, but more than that is a truly fantastic song.

Common with Blur releases is the high quality of the album packaging. Interesting and intruiging art and photography make for a booklet that is almost as good as the album itself. Based on the concept of a desire to escape the overbearing suburban world that was taking hold in Britain at the time, the design team at Stylorouge did a brilliant job.

What makes "The Great Escape" so powerful is its subtle textures. More listens provide greater rewards from what is perhaps Blur's densest album. The seemingly unsinkable, almost bubbly nature of Britpop soon reveals the paranoia of invasion from a world of yuppies, CEO's and members of the country club. With production that makes the album sound gigantic, Blur has never sounded so clear and personal.

This album is not so much a sequal to "Parklife" as a dark mirror of it. The tales of Londoners found in "Parklife" have been replaced by the twisted secret lives of suburban dwellers here. For Blur fans this album is a gem and I recommend it as highly as possible. But for an introduction to Blur I think I would start with something else, most likely "Blur: the Best of" or "Parklife." A challenging album that never ceases to entertain me.

-Justin M. Freiberg

Allow me to sum up my history with this album; bought it, sold it, missed it, bought it again, and now I'm tempted to sell it again.

That's the thing about this album: a lot of it is catchy and essential as far as understanding Blur as a whole, but at the same time, to steal from Noel Gallagher, it's chimney sweep music. Exhibit A: "Mr Robinson's Quango", quite possibly the most irritating moment they've put on tape.

I bought this one again because I thought "Stereotypes" was a great peice of guitar music and "The Universal" a lovely peice of music in general. I even liked "Globe Alone" which hinted at their "lo-fi" direction they would later embrace in full on "Blur." Yet with each listen, I find myself fast-forwarding more and more through another track oozing with "quirky" character sketches. If I wanted character sketches from East London, I would have rented either "Long Good Friday" or something. Exhibit B: "Top Man"; infintely more annoying than "Ernold Same" though only just.

I'm confused by the show of support this album garners here, as a lot of people (Blur included if I'm not mistaken) have distanced themselves a great deal from it. I'm more content to listen to their first three albums than anything else, because they had everything to prove back then, but this is just going through the motions. Exhibit C: "He Thought Of Cars" is a re-hash of "This Is A Low".

I'll give it three stars (two for the music and a third for the packaging concept) but highly recommend their first three if you're looking for Blur's best.

I don't care about Oasis. Blur were the undisputed kings of the Brit-pop wars. Long after the wars ended, Blur put out two excellent albums(self-titled and 13). The Great Escape is exactly what it says, Blur escaping from Brit-pop for a new musical direction, and that means even being called sellouts for doing it.

Great Escape is less of a sequel to Parklife as it is an expansion on Modern Life is Rubbish. Taking the orchestrated sound of MLIR and expanding it to an even larger heights. The sound is propelled even more by horns and strings then the forementioned album. The result is a lush, melodically solid album. Not a huge leap forward in sound, but more of refininment. It's not a bad thing since the songs still sound fresh and exciting.

Even with the help of classical instruments, Blur still makes sure that they are the core of the sound. Albarn's vocals are still amazing, mixed in with a dark yet humorous wit. Not to mention he still plays a plethora of instruments as usual. Coxon plays some absolutely bizarre riffs complemented by Roundtree's standard time keeping drumming and James's bass playing. The songwriting is the real star of the album. Composition has always been a star point of Blur and TGE doesn't disapoint. Infact, I would go as far as to say that this is their most musically intricate work to date. So many layers and textures to listen to/for that this album has tons of replay value. Also, Albarn's lyrics have a certain subtitle bite to them, poking fun of modern day life in a way that only he can.

This is certainly a CD that cannot be missed. I understand why they decided to change musical directions. Some say that Great Escape painted them into a corner in which they needed to get out of. I think its more of an ode to a musical sound that they needed a change from. For that, I can't recommend this album enough.

There is a slightly sentimental nerve in this music, very strong arrangements, thoughtful and funny lyrics "...he takes all manner of pills, piles up analyst bills in the countreeeeyyy...". The production is super clean, and the vocals very nonchalant, as if they really couldn't care less if they hit the high notes. I think i have heard this 100 times or more and I can't tire of it.

The great escape is through buying this album, opening yuor mind to a world of possibilities, and not getting stuck in an infernal rut like the characters within it, a sorry world of automatons, stereotypes, caricatures, cliches, mannequins, marionettes and gibbering ventriloquist's dummies.

After the enjoyable Cockney charade of 'Parklife', this is the real thing: a complete nightmare vision, Pynchon's model of informaiton overload leading to entropy and inertia. Despite the 60s aesthetic of many songs, and the spanking 90s modernity of the production, this is a worldview belonging to the 70s, that of Monty Python's stockbrokers, suicidal Reggie Perrin, Martin Amis, Mike Leigh. It is a world where prosperity and progress lead to mindless repetition - the recurrent figure in these songs is the circle: the waltz that surprisingly concludes 'Mr Robinson's Quango'; the fairground roundabout tinkles, where innocence has been replaced by infantilisation.

There is no escape in Damon's bleak lyrics. The respite, the possibilities, come in the music, in this, Blur's most restlessly inventive album. At the time of its release, there was a hyped struggle between Blur and Oasis, but there is no comparison between the latter's laddish monotone, and Blur's musical intelligence. Each song on this album tells of a regimented life grinding to a halt; each song fizzes with musical ideas, pilfered from a vast store of influences, the 60s rock canon, 70s post-punk, 80s American art-rock, Europop, muzak, 'Sound Gallery'-esque functionalism, film soundtracks, lounge music, left-field experimental pop (e.g. Stereolab), half-remembered fragments from TV ads and children's programmes.

The variety is not only between songs, but in them, where the rock-ska stomp of 'Quango' is interrupted by a bizarre trumpet fantasia, or the incongruous 'Um's that deadpan through 'Top man'.

People have accused Damon of being too 'ironic', perhaps feeling cheated that songs as visionary and beautiful as 'The Universal' or 'yoku and Hiro' are actually dystopian satires of late capitalism; but surely the emotion lies in the tension between the universalising designs of the corporations decried in the lyrics, and the universal, human emotions they want to repress, expressed in the gorgeous, aching music.

The Great Escape is, in my humble opinion, the best and most underrated pop album of the 90's. It is an album where each song doesn't necessarily flow together and yet to the listener, it feels like the album created a world. In that world are characters that are pretty bummed out. Damon Albarn sympathizes with these characters, it's as if he makes fun of them and becomes friends with them at the same time. He narrates what they do, but understands why they do them. He treats them as if they just took the wrong path by mistake and now they're paying for it. But what I love most about The Great Escape is how diverse the themes are. This album has everything: humor ("Mr. Robinson's Quango", "Dan Abnormal"), wit ("Charmless Man", "Top Man"), optimism ("Could Be You"), pessimism ("Fade Away", "He Thought of Cars"), fantasy ("The Universal"), and desperation ("Entertain Me", a perfect gem and Blur's crowning achievement). The songs are tight and structured; there's nothing indulgent about The Great Escape. The real true great escape of the album is the final minute of carnival music at the end. It's as if Dan Abnomal, Ernold Same, and Mr. Robinson (and everybody else) actually decided on going to a carnival and forget about their problems for a day. If you love this album the way I do, it will probably make you watery-eyed.
Rarely ever have songs so simple sounded so profound. The Great Escape is Blur's Revolver, a wide-ranging and stunning masterpiece that should be considered vital. A+

Blur's epic tale of alienation in the modern world is a fascinating and eclectic work that blends different musical styles and thematic moods into a cohesive masterpiece. By combining musical influences from a variety of sources (too many to enumerate) and adding their own immense talent, they manage to create catchy songs that are also profound, unpredictable and dazzlingly elaborate.

The music is absolutely brilliant, but it takes second place to Damon Albarn's intelligent and insightful lyrics. The characters are quite impressive, all of them modern stereotypes examined with a depth seldom found in pop and presented in a way that is both satirical and sympathetic. They include the bored suburban wife who runs a little B&B and loves a man in uniform, the successful high flyer who's torn between the realisation of the futility of his life and chemically induced happiness, the fatuous upper class twit who knows all the important people yet cannot help being a terrible bore, and the respectable pillar of society that pinches his secretary's bum and wears knickers under his suit.

Damon has a warm and expressive voice that can be sweet, despondent and ironic at the same time, and the rest of the band are just as talented and inventive - guitarist Graham Coxon is particularly effective. Also featured are a string quartet and a horn section and the arrangements are outstanding. The Great Escape is an extraordinary achievement that works both as a collection of catchy songs and as a profound analysis of contemporary society - and that is precisely what pop music is supposed to do.

the great escape is without a doubt blur's best album; anyone who doesn't think so knows nothing about music. this album is them at their height of craftsmanship and musicianship, lyricism, politics and vision. and for everyone who thinks they got more masculine and dark after this, the great escape is easily their most hardcore, neurotic album. damon's vocal delivery is stingingly over-confindent and sharp (surely he's coked up), the bands dynamic is at its tightest, and the production ironically, i believe in ten years time, will hold up as their best. most of all of course this is in the top ten coolest guitar albums ever made, graham coxon only went downhill from here. even johnny radiohead never topped this.. the only reason some people are turned off by this album is in the strong british accent in damon's vocals, yet he's making fun of britain more than anything. and also people i think are simply overwhelmed and intimidated by the talent, imagination and intelligence of this album. all of this maybe amounts to the great escape being the most underrated album of our generation.

It's not that this album is about how the lives of well-off middle-class white-collar workers aren't as good as they might look. It's that it does it so unbelievably well. Sure, the music is great itself - lots of diverse instruments, horns, background vocals, groovy guitarwork - but it's the lyrics that make this album so amazingly good. Seriously - these songs made me realize quite a few things about myself and the world. Just look at "Charmless Man," a song about a college-educated socialite who looks like he has everything (money, education, connections) but really is utterly, completely alone in the world. Or look at "Fade Away," a song about a married couple who have lost all feeling in their lives and just drift along ("they stumbled into each others' life, in a vague way became man and wife"). Or look at "Ernold Same," about a man hopelessly lost in the rat race ("woke up from the same bed, from the same dream...went to the same bus and sat on the same seat with the same nasty stain next to same old whatsisname"). Or look at "Yuko and Hiro," a moving story of a man and woman who love each other but work so much that they never spend time together. Now, if you're middle class or have lived in the suburbs, just try to tell me you've never seen people like these in real life. They're everywhere. There are lots of "successful" people who are still so lonely that it's frightening. It's utterly brilliant, all throughout, and I'm sure it will open many people's eyes to where they're headed in life. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I really like this album, moreso than anything their fierce rival Oasis has put out. Whereas Oasis flaunts their influences, Blur draws on them without fanfare, providing many Beatlesque melodies including the beautiful, psychedelic-waltz,"The Universal," with horns that conjure up images of "Penny Lane." Other standout tracks are "Stereotypes," and "Country House." I love the 60's backing vocals of "Country House." That song is also a favorite for my band to play live. All in all this is a good album and ranks up there with my favorite Blur albums.