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''Think Tank'' is the seventh studio album by the English alternative rock band Blur, released on 5 May 2003 in the United Kingdom. It represented a major musical change for the group with experimental and World Music elements being added to the usual Britpop palette. It also gave them their highest charting album in the United States. The album cover was stenciled by the graffiti artist Banksy. The album's cover art sold at auction in 2007 for £75,000. ''NME'' ranked the album number 20 on its Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade list. - Wikipedia

We Yanks do like our pop super-sized. Given a choice between the arena-readypower balladry of Oasis and the quirky pop miniatures of Damon Albarn, we'llget swept up in the bluster faster than you can say "cor blimey."So it's no surprise Blur's biggest hits-"Girls & Boys," "Song2"-have been aberrations, capturing the energy of the styles they dabblein (post-rave Eurodisco, football shout-along) in a friendly but self-consciousway. The band's newest single "Crazy Beat," produced jarringly byFatboy Slim, continues that tradition: it sounds like it's about appreciatingthe nightlife rather than living it. In short, Albarn's always come off as anoutsider who dreams that pop, with its promises of community, might ease whathe's too decent to call his alienated soul.

Last year he followed the path of so many pasty postcolonials before him, fromPaul Simon to Peter Gabriel, and went to Africa, where he recorded an albumcalled Mali Music with a number of West African musicians. Think Tank, recordedin Morocco, subtly continues in that direction at times, with good results.The departure of Albarn's chief foil, guitarist Graham Coxon, gives Albarn'sideas a chance to ramble more than needed, but the polyrhythms he occasionallyappropriates are no more foreign to American ears than his earlier Britishisms,and bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree grow into this new rhythmicrole seamlessly (the former's thick bass on "Ambulance" is a particularstandout.) But though I know the song title "Moroccan Peoples RevolutionaryBowls Club" is tongue in cheek, a more explicit political sense would bewelcome—Albarn shouldn't be afraid to say something about the world he obviouslywants to engage with.