Revisit an early shoegaze single by Blur
1991 was a big year for guitar music. It saw the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind, Primal Scream’s towering Screamadelica, and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. This huge convergence of styles made establishing a vision as a guitar outfit quite challenging, as Blur discovered with their 1991 release Leisure. But despite being regarded by Damon Albarn as the band’s worst effort, the record should in no way be written off. In fact, track such as ‘She’s So High’, a song that blends the baggy beats of the Madchester movement with the lush textures of shoegaze, is well worth revisiting, not least because it offers us insight into how Blur went from being an indie band with a modest following to one of the biggest pop groups on the planet.
Blur released ‘She’s So High’ in 1990. Ten years earlier, Damon Albarn had met guitarist Graham Coxon at school in Colchester. After enrolling at Goldsmiths University of London eight years later, Graham met Alex James – introducing him to Albarn before bumping into drummer Dave Rowntree shortly after. With that, Blur was born. Well, actually, they were known as Circus until Andy Ross of Food records asked the band to change their name. Ross drew up a list of alternatives, and Albarn and Co. settled on Blur. With that, Blur was born.
After landing a gig as The Cramps’ support act on their UK tour, Blur released their single, ‘She’s So High’. As Coxon would later recall on The O-Zone, “We were known as an indie band I suppose, because of our particular sound.” According to Dave Rowntree, however, the sound in question “wasn’t the kind of music we wanted to make. There were lots of factors at the time that were pulling us in various directions, and it was only really on the first album that we hadn’t sorted out in our minds what we wanted to do.”
This lack of clarity saw ‘She’s So High’ fall at the intersection between shoegaze, indie-rave and pop. You can hear glimmers of Slowdive, The Stone Roses, Chapterhouse and countless others, all of which combine to form a delightfully murky blend of undeniably vague UK pop. It didn’t make much of an impact in the charts, peaking at number 48. However, it earned Blur enough recognition that they became the charismatic face of a huddle of bands who regularly played at London’s Syndrome Club.
The Scene That Celebrates Itself, as it was called, included bands like Stereolab, Thousand Yard Stare, Swervedriver and Chapterhouse, and was essential to the arrival of shoegaze’s year zero in 1991. But Blur had their eyes set on glitzier sights, and it wasn’t long before their sound was becoming associated with a new umbrella term: Britpop.
Revisit ‘She’s So High’ below.
