Blur
are a band in a constant state of motion, never satisfied to rest where
their previous record has left them. They are a band of self-reflection
and reinvention, a band unwilling to stand still. One that demands change
within themselves, they enjoy the thrill of placing themselves out on the
limb. The newest Blur emerges with their latest and possibly most inventive
album to date, 13.
The
London based quartet could have easily rested on their laurels after being
feted with number one singles, Brit awards, and critical acclaim for leading
the movement known as Britpop with their albums Parklife and The Great
Escape. But Blur are wonderfully restless. They knew they had to change
to satisfy their creative appetites, so they shifted to a more experimental
free sound, drawing on influences such as Beck, Tortoise, Pavement, Neu
and dub music. That change was first heard on Blur, the band's 1997 gold
album, and is now fully realized on 13. The album was recorded and mixed
with studio avatar William Orbit, best known recently for producing Madonna's
Ray Of Light.
Singer,
songwriter, musician Damon Albarn explains the album was about "becoming
completely free, becoming artistically liberated. Blur was a move in a
new direction, as our second album Modern Life Is Rubbish was to our first
record. 13 is a fully-realized follow up to Blur as Parklife was to Modern
Life Is Rubbish."
13
represents a break with the past in many ways. It is the first album on
which the group haven't collaborated with producer Stephen Street. "We've
done some fantastic work with Stephen in the past," Damon says, "and we
have the greatest respect for him. But we had reached the stage where we
wanted to challenge our own way of working." This new way of working involved
lengthy improvisations around song structures which Orbit and his crew
would painstakingly record and edit. The result is a sound at once abstract
and yet crowded with detail and inspiring moments.
13
also has its roots in all kinds of changed personal and emotional circumstances.
It is the sound of a group maturing into a fully realized musical whole,
making the music that best expresses them at present: from "Tender," an
epic gospel hymn of consolidation described by bassist Alex James as "one
of the best things we've ever done. It's going to fucking knock people
out," to the anguished yet hopeful blues of "No Distance Left To Run,"
from the lo-fi pop cool of Graham Coxon's "Coffee & TV" to the alluring
strangeness "Battle" and "Mellow Song." The song "Trailer Park," which
originally was written for the South Park album, is a splendid Kraut Rock/mutant
hybrid. 13 is the sound of a group with the happy and enviable position
of inhabiting a soundworld that is utterly their own vision and creation.
And even though, while listening to 13, you may find flashes of everything
from The Fall to Faust to Nick Drake to Pink Floyd to The Staple Singers
to Wire to Augustus Pablo, the album is completely Blur.
13
is Blur's sixth album and marks the band being together for 10 years. Damon
Albarn and Graham Coxon met at Colchester's Stanway School and teamed first
with local itinerant musician Dave Rowntree and later the student boulevardier,
gourmet, physicist-in-training and New Order fan Alex James of the seaside
town of Bournemouth.
They
became Blur in 1989 having spent the best part of a year as Seymour, the
shambolic Brechtian art-rock act that baffled most of the London media.
Renamed Blur, they caught the ear of Food Records and were signed soon
thereafter. After releasing the hit singles "She's So High" and "There's
No Other Way" in England, their debut album Leisure came out in 1991. The
album was a bamboozling mix of abstract My Bloody Valentine-style noise,
psychedelic tunefulness and classic British beat-pop. It reached number
seven on the British charts. Despite public indifference to their lost
classic single "Popscene," Blur stuck to their guns and released Modern
Life Is Rubbish, a record that's darkly and quixotically British. Its imaginative
arrangements and grasp of pop's lexicon flew in the face of the grunge
sound that most pop culture commentators were fixated on at the time. The
English magazine Select declared them "the best British group since the
Smiths."
This
new direction in the group's sound lead inexorably to what may be seen
as a watershed in 1990's British pop: the Parklife album. Parklife entered
England's cultural bloodstream and became more than just an album; it became
a nation's consciousness. Parklife has sold well in excess of two million
copies worldwide. 1995's The Great Escape took this phase of the group's
development to its logical and lavish extreme: finely crafted and impeccably
tailored pop songs where radiant skillful arrangements mask acerbic observations.
Blur's well-publicized rivalry with Oasis gripped England that summer,
with the crowning moment coming when the masses chose Blur's "Country House"
over Oasis's "Roll With It." But such songs were to spell the end of Damon's
fascination with narrative and character songs: "I had to move on and start
to sing in a more genuine voice."
That
voice, and the new voice of the band as a unit, was first heard on the
album Blur. Released in 1997, it reflects a new awareness of left-field
American rock particularly on Graham's part and a new found love of the
empty beauty of Iceland on Damon's and Alex's. Also heard is a growing
dissatisfaction with English pop music and the nature of stardom as
epitomized
by the facile feud with Oasis. Blur is an abrasive but oddly attractive
record that added some great new songs to the Blur canon, including the
anthemic hit "Song 2" and the mysterious "Strange News From Another Star."
It also featured the first solo foray on a Blur album from Graham, the
cracked melancholy "You're So Great."
Since
the release of Blur, the individual members have busied themselves with
a variety of other projects. Alex has become a pop star all over again
with the curiously unfathomable Fat
Less
combo. Dave Rowntree has immersed himself in computer animation, and he
and Alex have become keen flyers and are backing the 2003 British Unmanned
Mars probe. Graham has formed his own label, Transopic, which he uses as
an outlet for the music he loves. Last year he released his acclaimed solo
album The Sky's Too High. Damon has followed up his acting debut in Antonia
Bird's "Face" by co-composing with Michael Nyman the music for Bird's latest
film "Ravenous."
Generally,
after 10 years, many bands strain to be in each other's presence, but the
members of Blur have found a new sense of well being. "Things have never
been healthier between us as a group," said Damon. "We've acknowledged
that we are different people, which ironically has made us realize how
much we have in common and why we formed as a group in the first place.
We respect each other and we're remembering how much we love each other's
stuff." Out of a tempestuous few years has come an album of great strength
and individuality, an album that can only be Blur.
