What is Leisure?
Short Answer:
Blur’s debut. A band trying to find itself while the scene collapsed around them.
Long Answer:
What is it?
Leisure is the first Blur album, released on 27 August 1991. It came out wearing the wrong clothes at the wrong party. Britpop hadn’t arrived yet. Madchester was already heading for the exit. Blur showed up just in time to miss both.
Eleven tracks, plus two more on the CD. Groove, gauze and guesswork. Recorded while the band were still students and sounded like it. The talent is obvious. The direction isn’t.
Tracklist
She’s So High
Bang
Slow Down
Repetition
Bad Day
Sing
There’s No Other Way
Fool
Come Together
High Cool
Birthday
Wear Me Down
Starts with a whimper. Ends with a haze. In between, there’s funk, fuzz and flashes of what would come later. Sing is the standout. Ghostly and timeless. The rest is what happens when a band tries on other people’s clothes to see what fits.
Where was it recorded?
Battery Studios, London
Maison Rouge Studios, London
Produced by Stephen Street, though the label had a say and it shows
This wasn’t the confident, antagonistic Blur of later years. This was the early version. Unsure. Over-directed.
Who played on it?
Damon Albarn – vocals, synths, early signs of theatrical boredom
Graham Coxon – guitar, backing vocals, shoegaze instincts clawing through
Alex James – bass, grooves borrowed from funk and stolen from funkier bands
Dave Rowntree – drums, holding it together while everyone else tried to find the beat
They sounded like four different bands in the same room. Which is to say, they were Blur.
Sound and Style
Britpop hadn’t been invented yet, so Leisure went fishing in whatever pond was still stocked. Baggy, shoegaze, post-Madchester funk-pop. It’s all here, stepping on each other’s toes. The production smooths everything into the same wallpaper texture.
But behind the dated beats and floppy haircuts, there are signs of life. Sing is a slow-burn masterpiece. There’s No Other Way still has legs. The rest is a band out of time, reaching for something that wasn’t there yet.
Reception
The label pushed them as the next Stone Roses. They weren’t. Critics were polite. Sales were solid. But no one was fooled. Blur were interesting. Leisure wasn’t.
Damon’s since disowned most of it. Graham too. But that’s hindsight talking. At the time, this was the first step. It had to happen.
Legacy
It didn’t change the world. But it let the band make Modern Life Is Rubbish, which did. That was the real beginning.
Still, Leisure has its place. The sound of a band about to sack off the scene they’d just entered. Lost. Undercooked. Occasionally brilliant.
If you want to understand where Blur came from, this is where the hangover started.
You Should Listen to Leisure Right Now
You should listen to Leisure right now because it’s the only Blur record that doesn’t know what Blur is yet.
It stumbles. It copies. It hides behind production tricks. But the band underneath is already dangerous. Sing alone is worth the time.
And if you squint through the fog, you can hear the sharp angles and sharper ideas starting to kick against the walls. Blur were built on restlessness. This is what restlessness sounds like before it finds a voice.
