What?: The sixth, and second to last, Blur album.
Why?: Honestly, I'm not the Blur fan in the family, my wife is. Not that I'm shifting any blame, just that I probably wouldn't have bought it.
Tell me more!:
I knew "Coffee and TV" because of that cute video with the carton of milk. Otherwise...
"Tender" is nice and all, but about five minutes too long. It flowed nicely though from listening to an album of Ween country songs though. I'm sure it is heaps of fun live though, lots of opportunity for crowd singing.
I love "Bugman", all over saturated heavy distortion and wig-out jam. Followed by the before-mentioned "Coffee & TV" which is about as "the Blur in my head" as this album gets.
The rest of the album, and I tread carefully when I say this, sounds like prettied up demos. Much evidence can be found in the song titles, which may as well be "Song 3" plus.
I love experimentation. I have many albums that I'd consider "favourites" that are little more than a few "songs" and random in-studio jams. I actually like it when a band doesn't write verse chorus songs.
So I'm not necessarily saying 13 is bad for being experimental. I am saying though that it is mostly an album of jams, from a band that isn't the most amazing instrumentally, and certainly not vocally...
I actually enjoy this album most when it gets really noisy, like the end of "1992", or the excellent electronic "Battle" (which could be an UNKLE song), or the crazy riff at the end of "Trailerpark".
I think they lost an opportunity not ending the album after "No Distance To Run". After so much riffage, vocal snippets and almost-songs, "No Distance To Run" is a beautiful calm, a come-down. Unfortunately they plugged "Opitgan 1" on the end. What even is that?
I sound quite negative, but I actually enjoy listening to this album. It's a pile of fun. I can hear Gorillaz coming (although not as much as I do from their last album "Think Tank"), I love the fight between punk and electronic. I don't really enjoy Damon's attempts at harmonising, but it does work in the context of this crazy piece of music.
I kept being reminded of David Bowie's "Heroes"... and I suppose both albums are similarly structured, although there are a long more "songs" on "Heroes".
5/10
(I fear in my scoring, in my attempts to avoid the usual music-review average of 6 to 8 out of 10, all I've done is move to 5 to 6 out of 10. That is as it is. Over the years, I may change my rating. I may drop them. I may, I may not.)
