Think Tank - review

Blur, the group of Damon Albarn. He has been with us on the anti-war movement. I have felt a connection with him and his music recently given all he has tried to do to make more people see that war was not neccessary. The first classic single "Out of Time" will be remembered in my mind as the soundtrack to a time when we all knew war was wrong. Having said that, I tried my hardest to listen to this album without the recent world events in mind...unsuccessfully. The album was recorded in Morocco, and it has a style of it's own, a style that's very detached from the current world of popular music. At times that can be a good thing, I'll take a serious look at this serious album and let you know how it affected me.

The albums opener, "Ambulance" is a sleepy, yet funky song, celebrating love, (in a very chilled-out way). The words, "No, I ain't got nothing to be scared of....." are repeated constantly, "Cos I love you..." love conquers all! Terrorism, bush, bombs, and orange alerts are not to be feared when love is being felt. It's a feel-good song and to listen to it is to truly understand why I take just those few words so literally. Musically, it sets the scene for much of the mid-tempo tracks which feature regularly on the album, heavy with sampled beats and filtered percussion, the whole album really takes full advantage of effects processors on many of the sounds and vocals.

One of the most mentioned events of this album, other than that it was recorded in Morocco, and lead guitarist Graham Coxon left the band during recording, was the involvement of Fatboy Slim on two tracks. I've never been crazy about Fatboy Slim, even if he is the biggest thing to come out of my city since...anything. Having said that I'll always give new music a chance, and one thing I can say about "Crazy Beat" is that it has energy, something that the Fat one is good at creating. I still feel it's a little hollow musically and blur themselves sound as if they're trying a little too hard to sound crazy!

Next up though, another mid-tempo chill-out track, "Good Song", this is one for the summertime, bottom line! The guitar loop will make you smile if your into your beats, and this track, as well as a few others, is very remeniscent of Albarn's work with "Gorrillaz" which, needless to say, I am feeling. Lyrically Albarn has the love-bug, "You seem very beautiful to me.." but once again, upon hearing the way he gets across these words, and the melodies, it sounds more groundbreaking than corny.

Round about halfway through the album I discovered a pattern that other listeners may agree with, the up-tempo songs are bad, the slower ones are good. As I mentioned above, I honestly didn't like or 'get' tracks like "Crazy Beat" and "We've got a file on you" which both have promise but don't seem to go anywhere musically. Also, as a lyricist myself, I find it harder to fit words into more up-tempo tracks, and the songs on Think Tank that see blur going for straight energy really don't sound as convincing as they used to on past albums, maybe they're getting old, but the energetic tracks are distinctly hollow and un-energetic sounding.

So more positives, "Caravan" is another stand-out track, this is actually pretty down-beat and if I described any one of the previous songs as "sleepy" then they're nothing compared to this. Again though, Albarn seems to sound a lot more creative on these slower tracks, just check out his trademark "lalala" style singing breaks to see what I mean. The beat to this track is also another electro/sampled piece of genius, evolving and unfolding slowly at a perfect pace along with the heavily filtered vocals, this is real sucessfully experimental music. Another slower track, which this time features the piano is the near-perfectly titled "Sweet song" not only is the piano seductive and emotive, the lyrics are just as 'sweet'. This is one of those tracks where the singer is apologizing to a woman for the pain he's caused. Any sensitive guy will appreciate the heartfelt lyrics just as much as rhythmically sweet percussion loops which are used in such a groundbreaking way on much of this album.

Sadly, the album doesn't end as sweetly, with "Gene by Gene" and "Battery in your Leg" both guilty of possessing much better names than music. Still, this is a diverse album that takes risks and showcases what true songwriting talent can do when it's locked up in Africa and kept away from popular influences. From that point of view this is a very pure album, and I find it easy to appreciate it based on that alone, seeing as how no one seems to know how to takes risks anymore in the music industry. From a strictly musical perspective though, Think Tank is at least 75% solid. The really pointless tracks don't do it much good ("Jets", "We've got a file on you" etc), but it has enough positivity overall to make up for that. A high-quality album to be proud of, with some really nice potential soundtracks to the summer of 2003, (if you give it a chance and buy it!) if I were you- I would.

by Y.Misdaq aka Yoshi