Blur: 13 ---Ink Blot Magazine

Blur: 13

Listen To Real Audio
Blur, "Tender"

at a glance...

Hometown: Essex/London, England
Formed: 1988

Personnel:
Damon Albarn -vocals, guitars, keyboards
Graham Coxon -guitars, vocals
Alex James -bass
Dave Rowntree -drums

Related Bands:
Seymour, Graham Coxon, Silver Apples, Elastica, Fat Les

Notes:
In 1989 they were a noisy, unpredictable art-rock outfit saddled with the terrible name Seymour. By 1999 they had become a noisy art-rock outfit using the slightly less terrible name Blur. A lot happened in between. Blur killed baggy, pretended to be mods, birthed Britpop, pretended to be Americans...and released some of the decade's best pop records along the way. Early hit singles "She's So High" and "There's No Other Way" provided an auspicious beginning, but the band almost imploded before 1993's Modern Life is Rubbish gave them a new look and a second life. Parklife pulled them out of the indie ghetto and into the British tabloids, but a foolish, if fun battle with Oasis overshadowed 1996's The Great Escape. It was to be the last of Blur's trilogy of English Life albums, and 1997's "Song 2" made them a surprise favorite in America's football stadia. Go figure.

Blur
13
Food/Virgin, Released 1999

In some ways, I hate this album. Blur were once the cleverest of pop groups, the first band since The Smiths to be musicianly and intellectual and consistently inventive within the context of catchy 3-minute tunes. That's changed. Six minutes into this album's 10th track, an ambientnoisekrautrockpsychballad called "Caramel," and I'm wondering what unspeakable things this band has done to the clever boys I loved so much.

Yet "Caramel" is wonderful, and so is much of 13. If Blur was a tentative step away from the pop past, 13 is a suicidal leap - the little girls are not coming back after they hear this. Yet Damon Albarn has tackled the "new direction" with aplomb, and it turns out he's almost as good at writing experimental head music and seven-minute gospel hymns ("Tender" it must be said, is fantastic) as he was at pretending to be Ray Davies.

There are some missteps, for sure. Clearly desperate to exorcise the contrivances that unfairly earned them a reputation as soulless pretenders, at times here they just aren't trying. "Swamp Song" and "Mellow Song" are as lazy as their titles, and "B.L.U.R.E.M.I." adds very little to Blur's existing canon of token punk rockers. But there are also great surprises - Graham Coxon's "Coffee & TV" is a nifty strumalong that recalls the best of Evan Dando and Elliott Smith, and "Bugman" is spunky enough to be this year's "Song 2." Best of all is "No Distance Left To Run," a heart-on-sleeve tearjerker Spiritualized would be proud to call their own.

So the band I once loved is officially dead. I'll get over it. Long live the new Blur.

If you like Blur, check out:
Blur Blur
Blur The Great Escape
Blur Parklife
Blur Modern Life Is Rubbish
Blur Leisure
Graham Coxon The Sky Is Too High
Pink Floyd The Piper at the Gates of Dawn / Relics
Can Ege Bam Yasi
Spiritualized Pure Phase

-- jf

Ink Blot Home
about | archives | contact | links