The Blur versus Oasis battle may have been won by the mouthy Mancunian brothers, but Damon Albarn might yet win the war. Having beaten a hasty retreat following the overblown music-hall of The Great Escape, Blur came back with a vengeance on their self-titled 1997 album, a superbly inventive antidote to the safe haven rock bluster of Be Here Now. 13 sees Blur tempting fate yet again, risking their hard-won super-stardom on a mad, discordant throw of the dice.
This ain't no jaunty stroll down Camden way, and it's no magical mystery trip down Britrock's memory lane, either. Blur's sixth album is a manic, mud-caked trek through unfamiliar territory, taking in Damon's dysfunctional mindscape, Graham Coxon's landmine guitar explosions, and producer William Orbit's whirling snowstorm of electronic space-dust. The seven-and-a-half-minute opener, Tender, is a slow-smouldering avant-gospel anthem with Damon's estuary blues voice seeming to lament his dragged-out break-up with Elastica's Justine Frischmann; Bugman blows off the cobwebs with typical Blur abandon, while Coffee & TV is lounge music for love's losers. Swamp Song wallows in the mire, but B.L.U.R.E.M.I. gurgles like some malevolent marsh creature on a rock'n'roll rampage. Battle sounds like a strange, subsonic clash of Serge Gainsbourg and Robert Wyatt and Trailerpark takes a twin peek down the weird back roads of Americana, Damon chanting lines like "I lost my girl to The Rolling Stones". Unlike R.E.M.'s recent attempts at sonic experimentation, 13 really is Blur's new adventure in hi-fi.
