|
Blur - 13
Reviewed
by
Q,
April 1999
 Strangely
enough, for a group whose 1991 breakthrough hit was
entitled There's No Other Way, there's every possibility
that Blur really could have gone either way. Not until
Food hooked up the artists formerly known as Seymour with
Smiths producer Stephen Street - who took a song
originally twice its recorded speed and strapped on
loping Stone Roses breakbeats, to craft a single that
reached Number 8 - did Blur really begin to resemble a
commercially viable proposition. No matter how much of a
cherubic pin-up their lead singer happened to be.
Early, pre-release Blur gigs on the circuit
of dank, toilet-scented capital venues showcased a band
who were equal parts deep-fried garage psychedelia and
abrasive new wave, as fronted by a dirty blond,
middle-class pretty boy whose chief desire, it seemed,
was to emulate Iggy Pop. In this nascent period -- while
not too far removed from the pogo-ing live performer he
remains - Damon Albarn was willing to go to extraordinary
lengths to capture the attention of his audience: scaling
precariously balanced PA stacks with the speed and
agility of a monkey, launching himself into the crowd (a
good 18 months before stage-diving became vogue with the
grunge audiences that Blur later claimed to despise) and,
on occasion, stopping singing altogether and simply
battering himself around the cranium with his microphone.
At heart, Blur were always left-field.
Later, when the fight they picked with Oasis came
dangerously close to finishing them off, they found a new
space within the 14 diverse tracks of their eponymous
fifth album. In some ways, however, Blur had simply got
back in touch with what came naturally: Song 2 would have
seamlessly slotted into any of their early live sets.
With 1997's Blur album, it appeared to have dawned on
them that as long as they had three or four decent
singles, the remainder of an album could become a
playground for their art rock imaginations. Which takes
us to 13, already likened by Albarn in respect to Blur's
fifth album as "Parklife to Modern Life Is
Rubbish".
Still, it's a misleading statement. If
Parklife magnified the stylisms patented in Modern Life
Is Rubbish to great unit-shovelling benefit, then it was
arguably an exercise in extremes. In that sense, 13 takes
the outer reaches of the Blur album and then, challenging
the commercial consequences and even tempting
superstitious luck with its title, pushes the envelope.
The launch point for 13 is I'm Just A Killer
For Your Love, the 10th track on Blur, performed in a
distorted American accent - a surprising new addition to
Albarn's canon of multi-personality vocal traits - and
added to the album at the 11th hour, having been
originally slated as a B-side. Notably, it was the only
track on Blur not produced by Stephen Street, mainstay of
their catalogue. 13 marks the break-up of that
long-standing relationship and the band's gravitation
towards William Orbit, after the electronic sound
designer's odd, Ramones-flavoured remix of On Your Own
for the stopgap Bustin' & Dronin' remix album
inspired the group.
While some preliminary work on Blur's sixth
album began before the 1998 World Cup, the group slacked
off for the entirety of the tournament, regrouping days
after the final whistle for the beginning of sessions
that guitarist Graham Coxon grimly predicted would be
"hard". Orbit has hinted that the recording of
13 was troubled: "sometimes there was blood on the
floor… figuratively speaking", citing the
personal problems of Coxon and Albarn as fogging the
process.
Blur found their creative legs this time
around through lengthy improvisations, captured and
edited digitally by Orbit. As a result,
13 is their loosest, skaggyest work. Calling card single
Tender has already burned itself into the national
consciousness, all Appalachian guitar and Give Peace A
Chance shuffle, although it's really no indication of
what follows. Potential singles first, then. Bugman is
Song 2 taking a detour through Suffragette City. The
lyrical premise remains abstractly dumb ("I go out
in the city/I stay away from the bugs"), with Albarn
resurrecting his Iggy/Ian Hunter-cribbed stance,
resulting in what will surely be a thrilling, filthy
moment come the chart rundown.
Coffee & TV is the closest offering to
Old Blur: an upbeat, easy-strummer led by Coxon (wry
opening line: "Do you feel like a chain
store?/Practically floored") in the verses, before
the baton is passed to Albarn for the sugar-sweet, yet
soporific choruses. Other than that, as an outside bet,
two tracks before the album's close there is Trimm Trabb,
built around acoustic guitar and skippy, filtered drums,
which gives way to a Scary Monsters-fashioned guitar
collage outro. In a resigned, semi-detached tone, Albarn
intones the chorus hookline: "Let it flow/I'll sleep
alone".
Flagged up in the pre-publicity as Albarn's
most baldly personal album lyrically, 13 strives in some
way to counter the lingering accusations that Blur remain
a stylish, yet soulless outfit. It is, naturally enough,
within the ballads that the singer off-loads his
emotional baggage. Still, the emphasis for the most part
is firmly on the oblique.
In Caramel, their most prog-rock effort
since This Is A Low, gently chiming guitars and Procol
Harum organ provide the backdrop to a series of
dislocated decisions - "I've gotta get over/I've
gotta get better/I love you forever" - before
launching into a lengthy baroque vocal crescendo that
echoes Yes. Already, it's easy to picture it being a
highpoint of Blur's next festival set.
The track 1992, pointedly the year that
Damon and Justine Frischmann met, recalls Sing from their
1991 Leisure debut and offers the teasing couplet
"What do you owe me?/The price of your peace of
mind", although tellingly, the last verse arrives in
indecipherable falsetto behind a wall of space echo
feedback.
Only in the introspective, yet oddly
anthemic No Distance Left To Run does the singer strip
himself bare. An open letter to his ex-partner, the
initial verses are full of self-pity ("It's over/You
don't need to tell me/I won't kill myself trying to stay
in your life") before fuelling rumours that their
split was hastened by drug problems ("When you're
coming down, think of me here") and then finally
lays some measure of blame at his own door, as Albarn
expresses the wish that in the future she finds someone
who "stays around, spends more time with you".
Delicate and touching as it is, it's the only moment
where he lets his guard down.
This being Blur, much of the remainder of 13
is artful sonic experimentation. The nursery rhyme dub of
Battle could be a collaboration with UNKLE; the vague,
record industry-trashing B.L.U.R.E.M.I. sounds not
unwelcomingly like Top Of The Pops by The Rezillos; Swamp
Song - destined to set the teeth of any Blur-hater on
edge - throws glam rock shapes and features the frontman
strangulating his vowels in cartoon Bowie/Ferry mode with
a string of throwaway lines ("Give me fever/Give me
space brain").
Only with Trailerpark - self-produced and
originally intended for the South Park album - do they
come a cropper, with half-baked hip hop dub, topped by
Albarn MC-ing like a white dread with a mobile disco in
the corner of the Uni bar. All said, there's every chance
that, aside from Tender and possibly Coffee & TV, the
floating Blur fan will simply be confused by 13,
sledge-hammering away large chunks of their current
audience. Still, it remains a dense, fascinating,
idiosyncratic and accomplished art rock album. In that
sense, perhaps, six albums in, Blur have come full
circle.
(4/5) Tom
Doyle
|
