EU Pressing, 2000.
Earl Collection 00013
For those of us who were into pop-rock in the 1990’s Blur really did seem like our generation’s Beatles. They wrote smart well arranged melodic music that was both artistically on the money and also popular. They had a distinct artistic arc during which they became both more experimental and more mature. Music is my Radar was the pinnacle of that process, a stand-alone single that ended up on their best of album released in the same year.
Music is my Radar is a metronomic funked out road-trip through rhythmic excess, ending in an unfurling guitar fuzz freakout. As great as this track is it is the B-side, Black Book, that really does it for me, it’s one of those songs that is both uplifting and melancholic. When I bought this single from Dada Records in the year it was released I was going through one of those dark night of the soul periods. My father died in the same month as its release (October) after years of illness and during the period I had to deal both with his death and its aftermath this single was the first thing I played when I got home and then again once at least half the bottle of wine had gone. It helped get me through and I now realise that for me never has a song been so aptly named.
