Amazon.co.uk Review
It all begins with a music-box noise, not entirely unlike the beginning of
Trumpton (you know, the kids' programme with the curiously named firemen). Welcome to yet another new identity for Blur. Gone are the caricatures of bed-and-breakfast owners and bankers, the cockernee knees-ups, football and pub laddisms.
13 is the starkest, most personal Blur album ever, going further in the direction the previous self-titled album hinted at. Dealing, for the most part, with frontman Damon Albarn's broken relationship with
Elastica's Justine Frischmann, it's as if Blur have ripped their heart out and left the bloody mess for all to see. "Tender", with its repetitive cycle of a tune and gorgeous gospel choir, must surely remind you of someone special, while "No Distance Left to Run" is pure, unashamed heartbreak. Relief comes in the form of the sweet, Graham Coxon-penned "Coffee and TV" and "B.L.U.R.E.M.I", which recalls their punkier days. Oh, and "Bugman" appears to have utilised the previously untapped musical properties of a vacuum cleaner. "Country House" this is not.
--Emma Johnston
CD Description
13 marks Blur hitting the 10-year mark as a band. During their first decade, the band went from being lumped in with Manchester bands such as Happy Mondays to becoming Brit-pop foils to Oasis. Their self-titled 1997 release found them inhabiting the same lo-fi neighborhood as American indie rockerslike Pavement. On 13, the London based quartet joins forceswith techno-pop producer William Orbit on a record whose inclusiveness manages to find room for both the gorgeous, choir-adorned "Tender" and "B.L.U.R.E.M.I"., a song that sounds like the illegitimate offspring of Wire, Devo, and Rick Dees.
Blur's work with Orbit finds them plunging deep into a lake of space-rock overflowing with wondrous sounds such as the pinging, Floyd-like tinkling, and hypnotic rhythms of "Battle", and the sputtering transmissions and bristling distortion permeating "Bugman". In straddling the dissolving lines between genres in the late '90s, Blur manages to trod the same ground as Underworld on "Trailerpark" and subscribes tothe aforementioned jittery, lo-fi aesthetics on "Trimm Trabb". Despite all this experimentation, Blur still sneaks in perfect pop nuggets such as "Coffee & TV", where cheery harmonies share space with a squealing guitar.