Review Summary: Daring, eclectic, and endlessly inventive and fascinating, "13" is Blur's masterpiece and a definitive British alternative rock album.
Some people hate Blur. They hate their middle-class smugness, overly witty lyrics, Damon Albarn's mild doucheyness or are just annoyed by hearing the dreaded "woo-hoo" at one too many sporting events. Some, like myself, love Blur. We love the way they can somehow capture the feelings of society in their music so well while still mocking it, the musicianship of all members, as top-notch as I've ever seen for a modern pop group, and Song 2 which still rocks my socks off every time I hear it, even though it's kind of a, purposely, dumb song that the band have written many better than.
Whether you love or hate Blur though, it's hard to deny how well the band has been able to never get stuck in a corner with their music. Well maybe 1995's "The Great Escape" sounds an awful lot like "Parklife" in its sound, but I feel like a lot of people overlook how wildly different it is in tone and lyrical content, substituting it's predecessor's eclectic, worldly bounce for a more introspective and decidedly melancholy one. As much as a huge, and successful, change in style made from their Britpop sound to the Lo-fi Indie of their 1997 self-titled album, 1999's "13" remains their largest shift in style. Despite the former's new style of production and guitarist Graham Coxon's newly freed hands, producing many a dissonant, feedback induced freakouts, "Blur" still had some pretty clever, social commentary and satire in the vain of "Girls and Boys" (Song 2 is a rather hilarious parody of Grunge, made all the more hilarious by the fact that it was Blur's big break in America because Grunge fans loved it), it still had some beautifully poppy melodies in "Beetlebum" and "You're So Great", and it still had the kind of songs everyone could sing along to like "On Your Own". "13" is another beast though.
Gone is all of this. Welcome in longer, denser jams, vocals buried deeper in the mix, almost to the point that you can't make them out, and just a general, persistent drone, accented by many a strange noise. To call it Blur's most experimental album would be an understatement. It's their most challenging and downright bizarre album, but it's also their masterpiece.
"Tender" opens the album, a deeply sad ballad in which Albarn attempts to get over his lost love, even though he knows he doesn't want to. Probably based on the fact that Albarn was in this same position at the time of writing, the song holds a deep and true feeling of sadness, created both from the beautiful lyrics by Albarn and Coxon and Albarn's hushed vocals. Despite the somewhat depressing state of the song, it's highly singable and catchy and, as such, now stands as the "Free Bird" of Blur Concerts with fans chanting Coxon's refrain, "Oh my baby, Oh why" in unison not only during the song but blank spaces throughout the show (for a great example of this, check out Blur's 2012 live album "Parklive"). It's a hell of a way to start the album, especially given that Blur often opened with some more upbeat, or at least rocking, numbers. The sombre beginning perfectly sets the tone for the wild and unpredictable ride that follows.
Next up is "Bugman", the song where the freaky stuff really begins. Built upon a fuzzed out guitar riff and some leads made by Coxon playing his guitar with a drill, Bugman is noise rock for sure, but it's also incredibly funky and by the time the songs second half kicks in it's downright danceable, something I can't say for a lot of the more experimental rock albums of the 1990s.
"Coffee & TV" is next, with both lyrics and lead vocals by Graham Coxon, one of only two songs he did this for along with 1997's "You're So Great". It's rather jarring on the album, being a pretty straightforward verse-chorus song with a great melody, but like "You're So Great" it showcases that even though his songs are simple, Coxon just knows how to write a great indie-rock song that in any place just plain sounds great, and it is a nice draw for even casual fans still looking for something with the more classic Blur sound.
Back to the funky stuff with "Swamp Song", sounding as murky and haunting as the place that spawns its title, followed by "1992", a song written in its namesake year but reworked for this album; spacey and full of feedback. Followed is "B.L.U.R.E.M.I", a brilliant 3 minute punk freakout. Simple and aggressive, it reminds us of how awesome Blur are when they are just let loose, bringing back memories of both "Popscene", their breakthrough single, and the classic "Song 2".
"Battle" is the most challenging song on the album, being nearly 8 minutes of minimalist sounds, broken only by the repeated chanting of the songs only lyric, "Battle, battle, battle, battle". It's long, but it has enough variety to never overstay its welcome, and its placement right in the middle of the album helps it from boring the listener too soon or seeming anticlimactic near the end. "Mellow Song", "Trailer Park" and "Caramel" all feel like extensions, offering just some different variations of sounds and chords and some more drawn out lyrics. The four tracks combined feel like a suite of sorts; a suite of extended experimental rock worthy of anything the likes of Radiohead have thanks to the sheer astonishing amount of fascinating things Coxon can come up on the guitar, accented by David Roundtree's percussion which is always doing something unique.
Having rained down noise for 23 minutes and exhausted every direction they could have gone without seeming completely pretentious, Blur tone things down considerably with Trimm Trabb, a sparse, basic song built on a simple, repeated guitar riff and some toned down vocals from Albarn. Like "Tender", it's a good example of a song that both feels different from everything Blur has done before but it still enjoyable as a pop song and has held a fairly permanent place in Blur's set lists since its release.
Climaxing it all is "No Distance Left to Run", Albarn's second ode to lost love which very effectively creates a bookend effect to the album. Like "Tender", the song is deeply ingrained with sadness, helped again by a beautifully emotive vocal by Albarn, possibly his finest. But where "Tender" felt depressing for its ideas of forcing oneself to not be sad about losing love, "No Distance Left To Run" feels hopeful, like its speaker has indeed moved on, but in a natural way, realizing that all that wanting to stay together with their love when can't does is make them "want to kill [them self]". With its spare instrumentation, just Albarn's voice and the bluesy guitar stylings of Coxon, considerably more basic and old-fashioned than the madness that erupts from his fingers for the preceding 60 minutes, "No Distance Left to Run" also feels like a musical statement from the band. It's as though with every direction they've gone in the album, there's really nothing left for them to do, making "13" a self-admitted peak. This ultimately rang true for Blur as it was the last album completed by the band as a working unit.
Blur may have catchier, more memorable, and funner albums, but none really feel as cohesive or satisfying as "13". Coxon peaks with his seemingly infiniste ingenuity, Alex James and David Roundtree remain one of the best rhythms sections in British rock just for the act of keeping up with the music on display but actually making it even more interesting, and Albarn's deeply personal lyrics throughout help to give the album an emotional heft that none of their others do. "13" may not be for everyone, and will always sort of live in the shadow of "Kid A", Radiohead's highly similar album that has always been considered the definitive experimental British rock album, but I can't get enough of it. With the kind of range on this thing there's many things I can call it from song to song, but as a whole I can only call it a masterpiece.
