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Back to: Archive · 2003 'Think Tank' reviewed From the Orange County Register website, 2 May 2003. Review by Ben Wener. Blur, "Think Tank" - In which Damon Albarn wrestles control of the long-running British band from guitarist Graham Coxon, then leads the remainder into a brilliant mess of an album, as untidy as the globe from which it steals exotic instrumentation and ideas galore. It's a modern "Sandinista!" in miniature, and not merely because it features a subversive slice of bouncy Clash updating called "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club". It's deeper than that, careening from the fractured dance bits found in Gorillaz and bass-propelled psychedelic groovers to white-hot flashes of punk ("Crazy Beat", the new "Song 2") and some of the loveliest, most sorrowfully compassionate melodies Albarn has composed. Anglophilic loyalists undoubtedly will disagree, but a clutch of clever singles aside, Blur didn't seem substantive until its dispirited, self-titled, U.S. breakthrough in 1997. Two years later, "13" signalled that the band's daffiness was dead and weirdness was here to stay. Now, at its most disparate, it has reached an unlikely peak. "Think Tank" is the best Blur album, period, sure to be among the finest of the year. Rating: Grade A. |