Blur – There’s No Other Way Review

One of their earliest singles and perhaps their best from Leisure, Blur returns to There’s No Other Way almost without fail. Their Madchester-like origins, this desire to fit into a genre rather than excel at their own, can be heard through the rush of guitar and wider instrumental appeal here. Yet in retrospect, thanks as well to Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon writing their way from twee glee to terrified, haggard tenderness, There’s No Other Way fits right in with what they worked on for their thirty years together. It certainly stands as one of their recognisable best. Slick guitar work from Coxon and some indispensable drumming from Dave Rowntree make sure of it. The work Blur put in as an instrumental collective here, like Girls and Boys, can stand tall even without Albarn singing.  

But he is at a bouncing, post-Madchester scene best here. This is not so much baggy as it is a slick guitar rock track, pushing the focus into the distortion and style Coxon would make a staple of the Blur sound. He is in these early days as he still is now, a pioneer for pushing instrumental efforts into new directions. With this and Sing, too, Blur finds the earliest pockets of their sound. It is perhaps why it still lingers so many decades later. There’s No Other Way is a firm favourite and it makes sense to be so beloved by fans. It still kicks well, and scratches the same itch as later efforts like Coffee and TV or Parklife, not lyrically, but instrumentally. An instrumental complexity at this early stage for the band is now taken for granted, yet it still sounds as refreshed and upbeat as it did on first listen.

That is the sign of a true great, which is more than can be said for the B-Side efforts attached to the single. Deep cuts like Inertia prove that, while the band had a slick style and effective instrumental purpose, had a long way to go in separating themselves from a music scene on the decline. A psychedelic flourish which they would depart from and leave to the starving vultures of Oasis or The Charlatans, a definite regional decision for the 1990s. Slight jangle pop features remove the instrumental interest early on and the wispy tones from Albarn, firm they may be on future releases, are loose enough to be considered tacky here.  

Storytelling trials on Mr Briggs struggle with the gawdy sense but are firmed up a bit by Albarn’s vocal range and the conviction which comes from its display. There’s No Other Way certainly relies on the lead track, the rest of the songs come feeling a bit more like filler than anything else. But nowhere is the musical gap between Leisure and what was to come clearer than on I’m All Over. Non-specifics but the feeling of being threatened, this fear of attack roaring through a muddy-sounding guitar section, is solid. Loose fun and a real scope of what was to come, but never escaping the vacuum of what was present at the times. Anything from The Smiths to Inspiral Carpets comes to mind, the approximation of an entire city’s worth of culture. Blur breaking from that baggy approach is the best choice they could have ever made, and it sounds like they cut it off at the right time.