REVIEW: Blur, 13 (Virgin)
- Robin Lapid
Blur have a more decisive air about them, and their sixth album resonates with their new attitude. On 13, they take their deconstructionist leanings to heart, and the desire to make British-inflected three-minute pop songs have been nearly overtaken by the need to overlay their sound with a more experimental vibe. Lead singer Damon Albarn bares his soul in his lyrics, admitting that the entire album is a chronicle of his break-up with Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann. As a result, 13 is a more expansive take on their last, eponymous (perhaps ominously-named?) album.
For the most part, Blur overhaul their unabashed pop hooks, infuse some punk ethics and crook them into an array of musical diatribes. With producer William Orbit at the helm, they spread over this a panoply of dark, moody trip-hop and similar tricks of the trade (the samples of a vacuum cleaner in overdrive, a radio tuner suddenly trailing off into sonic hyperspace and Albarn druggily intoning, "space is the place"). It's mood music of the highest order, sometimes effervescent and at other times just overindulgent.
The band load their aural script with the dark echo of electronic reverb, looped drums, and a thematic series of mantras. In "Caramel," a comatose Albarn intones, "where is the magic?/ Gotta get better" over gloomy synth; couched in the trip-hop and piano of "Trimm Trabb" he repeats, "I can't go back/ let it flow/ I sleep alone that's just the way it is" before Coxon superimposes an ascending whine of guitar and the voice trails off. Their experiments acquire a hit-and-miss ratio, smushing every traditional sound, lyric, and sample into a cacophonous sea of sonic waves, some fluid and haunting, and others merely the foam and drone of static eccentricity.
Tempering these temperamental tracks are aggressive punk freak-outs similar to Blur's "Chinese Bombs" ("B.L.U.R.E.M.I.") and "Movin' On" ("Swamp Song"). The odd sprinklings of love-lost ballads ground them to a less ethereal reality, from the doting sobriety of "No Distance Left to Run" to the pared-down, transcendent pop of Coxon's "Coffee and TV."
But there's a reason the band chose to open with soaring choir-backed ballad of "Tender," a song that grows on you with each listen. It's the gospel cry of "Come on, come on/ get through it" that becomes the album's overriding mantra, redeeming the awaiting melancholia with pop hope in one gentle, fell swoop.
