Urban Hat€monger ?

This is the album for me that started Britpop.I missed out on the Roses and Suede had more of the Bowie /Roxy Music thing going on.This was the first album I got that bought back the spirit of the Kinks & Small Faces songs my mother used to play me.In fact the first song on the album For Tomorrow is basically Waterloo Sunset for the 90s evoking the same imagery & themes of that song.What I like about this album is it`s a transitional Blur album.There are throwbacks to their showgazing Leasure days . Oily Water , Villa Rosie and the album closer Resigned are very reminicent of the psychadelic pop they were doing off that album.But you also have songs like Colin Zeal & Pressure on Julian which is very much the direction the band would take with the Parklife album with Damon Albarn writing upbeat pop songs in a third person perspective.
This album is also a good indicator of the tension between Damon Albarn`s pop experimentation and Graham Coxon`s love of fast hard rock songs which would ultimatly end up with the two parting company.Advert & Coping , two fast paced hard rock songs with Coxon`s guitar tearing into them as in the same mould as Song 2 (Without the annoying Woohooos)that I have always thought Blur are better at doing than most bands of the Britpop era.Sunday Sunday is your classic 60s British pop song that reminds me of Lazy Sunday Afternoon by The Small Faces and not just because of the lyrical content either.
The whole album sounds like to me as Damon Albarns tribute to British pop music , It`s all in here. Pop , Rock , psychadelia , ballads it doesn`t try to hide it`s influences, it embraces them and made them relevant in the 1990s.And a whole new genre of British pop bands emerged from it.
Oh yeah , and if you own the American version of this album it also includes the single only Popscene , my favourite Blur song of all time.Lucky bastards

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