It could be that I've remembered some of the details incorrectly, but I seem to recall this - Blur's debut album - greeted with a degree of cynicism, subsequently sinking into mumbling about how such a band could have had such an inauspicious beginning. It was baggy, as was everything else at the time, and the record label was EMI pretending to be an indie so as to be down with the kids, meaning this was actually Phil Collins trying to pass himself off as the first four Wire albums, or summink.
However: bollocks.
Blur were fucking great, and this was a fucking great debut by a fucking great band, which was fucking great. Suggestions that the lads should have maintained their integrity by saying no thank you, Parlophone, we were actually hoping to sign with United Dairies, aren't really worth taking seriously, beyond which we're left with the notion that Blur somehow lacked authenticity, which usually translates into failure to have been born in Manchester; because being from Manchester is not only a biographical detail, it's something in the music, something which defies definition, rather conveniently. Being from London is different and means you're not real, you sip cocktails with Eamonn Holmes at the weekend, and when you walk like a monkey and claim to be mad for it, you're just pretending.
Leisure is like a spikier version of early Pink Floyd, plenty of substance abuse, and some swagger, but it's balanced by a certain chemical ambiguity, a sense of come down or hangover which is neither mad for it nor necessarily sane for it. The baggy aspect may simply have been timing, or it may have been something emphasised in production, but it seems significant that for an album which hints at the psychedelic experience with such conviction, Leisure still doesn't sound dated, and is easily as good as anything the Stone Roses ever came up with. These be some killer songs, regardless of Damon Albarn having eventually turned into Sting.
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