Pulse- April 1999

IN A FAST-PACED ERA of computerized gadgets, momentary flings and flickering attention spans, it's tough enough to find a modern rock band that's been around for 10 years, let alone one that's survived the decade without becoming ensnared by its past. Sure, there's the Cure and Metallica. But the Replacements, Pixies and Soundgarden couldn't do it, and neither could Dinosaur Jr., Helmet or the Stone Roses. For English anti-conformists Blur, who formed in 1988, the key to longevity is treating each project like a brand-new exercise, ignoring what's worked in years prior in favor of breaking bold new artistic ground.

     Sometimes, the process has seemed selfishly subversive, as in 1993 when the band abruptly transformed from the shuffling, psychedelic rave-ups of Leisure (which featured the hit single "There's No Other Way") to the quirky, Kinks-meets-Beatles sound of Modern Life Is Rubbish . Even more dramatic mutations came in 1997, when the group abandoned its trademark Brit-pop sound on the album Blur, and embarked on a more experimental direction inspired by American indie-rock bands like Pavement and Sonic Youth. In the chorus of "Coffee and TV" from Blur's new disc 13 (named after the group's studio), frontman Damon Albarn sings "We could start over again." He's probably referring to the recent breakup of his long-term relationship with Elastica's Justine Frischmann, but he might as well be talking about his Blur circa 1999, as the band enters both the strangest phase and the second decade of its colorfully schizophrenic career.  

    "I think after 10 years, if you're still not a parody of yourself, people start to take you a little more seriously," says Albarn from the lobby of his Greenwich Village, New York hotel between sips of fluorescent red watermelon juice. "As soon as we understand something, we want to learn something new. I know that if someone gave me a subject, I could write a really good pop song about it, but I've learned that craft completely, and I don't feel the need to articulate that anymore."     

 Guitarist Graham Coxon is even more direct. "Once you've tiptoed away from pop, you don't really want to go back. It's kind of imprisonment-type music. It's too perfectly structured and limiting. I prefer music to be more of a freeform therapy."     

 On 13 (Virgin), commercial pop songs are the last thing bubbling through Blur's collective unconscious. At first listen, the album sounds cluttered, unfocused and surprisingly melancholy--lunar leaps from the perky melodies of "Country House" or the metallic head rush of "Song 2." From one track to the next, the band performs a confounding hodgepodge of country, gospel, dub, glam, trip-hop, indie-rock and krautrock. Upon return trips, however, the album unveils its captivating internal logic in much the same way as Radiohead's OK Computer. But while that album conveyed the frazzled thoughts of a mind overwhelmed by activity, 13 expresses the raging confusion and nebulous enervation of a soul overcome by a shattered romance. The first single, "Tender," a Johnny Cash-inspired lament, features the lines, "Tender is my heart for screwing up my life/ Lord I need to find someone that will heal my mind. " And in the woozy space-folk track "No Distance Left to Run," Albarn moans, "It's over, you don't need to tell me/ I hope you're with someone who makes you feel safe in your sleep . . . When you see me please turn your back and walk away/ I don't want to see you 'cause I know the dreams that you keep."     

 "This record was very much a result of everything that came from the dissolving of my relationship with Justine," says Albarn, his voice cracking slightly. "It's a plea to the higher forces to heal the pain. We'd been together eight years, so it was pretty devastating. It was very important to me to make a tribute to that experience, however melancholy it had to be.


     "In a way, the reason Justine and I ended up splitting up was because neither of us could deal with thinking, 'If this was it, was this it?' We had been together so long, but we didn't know if we were really each other's soulmates. I still think I'm a romantic, but at the moment I'm a recovering romantic. I really only had one girlfriend when I was 16, and then I didn't have another proper relationship until I met Justine. She was really my first proper girlfriend. I did believe that you could meet one person and then spend the rest of your life with them, but that obviously is not the case, so I have to reassess everything."     

 As introspective and heartbroken as Albarn sounds, 13 isn't all glum soul-searching and closed-door brooding: "Bugman" is a nihilistic romp, reminiscent of David Bowie's "Suffragette City"; "B.L.U.R.E.M.I," a tongue-in-cheek swipe at the band's former U.S. record label, blends turbo-charged punk with a vocoder-enhanced new-wave chorus; and "Trailer Park" (which was rejected for the South Park soundtrack) gurgles with otherworldly keyboards, psychedelic backbeats and serrated guitar lines.     

 "Splitting up wasn't all bad for me," affirms Albarn. "I went through a long period of self-pity and insecurity, but I also had the exhilaration of thinking, 'Well, I'm free to do what I want now.' It was more than just an emotional thing, really. We had built our careers together. When you live with someone, you tend to go back every night and talk to that person about your work. But this time, I just had to follow my own instincts, and I've become more confident about myself because I did it all on my own. The greatest thing about working on this record was being very much in love with the music we were making. It was a love affair to replace the one that was missing from my life."     

 Aside from giving Albarn a new perspective on his own career, his unexpected bachelorhood granted him insight into his own personality. For years, he had acted like an infallible pop star--charming and precocious, but nonetheless self-obsessed and egocentric. Suddenly, he discovered he was vulnerable. As he talks in a soft-spoken English accent, Albarn appears weary. His blue eyes still sparkle like sapphires, but his hair is tousled and unkempt and his boyish face is painted with several days of stubble growth.     

 "Before, Damon used to always hide behind sarcasm and irony and cockiness, and now he's got the confidence to say, 'I'm human, man,'" says Coxon. "He's being very sincere and kind of intimate, and I think it's great. It's much better than dealing with this madman penis egomaniac all the time."     

 As much as 13 was guided by Albarn's break with Frischmann, it was equally impacted by Blur's split with longtime producer Stephen Street, and its union with William Orbit, who produced Madonna's aurally rapturous Ray of Light. Blur chose Orbit last year after the sound guru volunteered to remix Blur's "Movin' On" for the 1998 Japanese album Bustin' + Dronin'. Instead of convening in the studio with carefully rehearsed, immaculately concocted songs, as it had with Street, Blur plugged in its instruments after just one or two listens to some rough demos Albarn had recorded.     

 "We jammed for two weeks solidly, and William recorded everything we did," says Albarn. "When you've been playing together for 10 years, you have a tendency to fall into grooves that you feel comfortable in, so jamming like that prevented us from repeating old bad habits. Then William tweaked it all in the studio, and added more overdubs and samples. A lot of what you hear is us sampling ourselves. He was very brutal with the mix, and he came up with some fantastic stuff. Working with William was a real step for us because we had taken what we had done as far as we could, and I just think if you can't do the same thing in a new way, you might as well find a new way of doing things."     

 The first half of 13 is musically diverse, dynamic and challenging, yet still grounded. With the sixth song "Battle," however, Blur's music becomes more galactic, as rhythms begin to drone and dub beats, echo effects and production tricks permeate the mix. "Yeah, that's about the time the drugs started to really kick in," says Albarn with a laugh.     

 Albarn describes 13 as Blur's most hedonistic record to date--one that allowed the band to strip away its inhibitions and realize its artistic potential. Bassist Alex James, the band's token lush, drank as much as always, and Coxon, who was previously sober, fell off the wagon and into a vat of lager. "It's better this way because there's not so much pressure on you all the time," Coxon says. "Saying you're not going to do something is quite terrifying. I'm not drinking as much as I used to, but I'm definitely not a teetotaler."     

 As evident from one listen to the swirling dub beats of "Battle" or the wafting strains of "Mellow Song," marijuana is Albarn's intoxicant of choice these days.     

 "I still like drinking, but not in the way I used to," says Albarn. "I just think grass is so appropriate for music making. And when you're talking to people, it makes you hear things that they're saying that you wouldn't necessarily hear otherwise. And it can get you in a much nicer head space. London is so chaotic and seemingly random, but every time I get stoned, I look at the flowers next to my window, and however chaotic everything is, it all slows down and becomes something that's in its place."   

   A few years ago, Blur was battling Oasis to be the biggest band in Britain. Now, such ambitions are wholeheartedly dismissed, and the band members craft songs simply to satisfy their own selfish urges. As creatively triumphant as it is, 13 seems destined to hit cut-out bins within months of its release. In a market that cherishes simple, dynamic rock songs, the band is releasing the nearly eight-minute single, "Tender," a plaintive, repetitive country number augmented by a gospel choir. It's not really an irreverent move, it's the only immediately catchy track on the record. In addition, Blur will probably not tour America this year, a move which has spelled sales disasters for countless overseas acts. "If you try to make something massively popular and it isn't, then it's a failure," says James. "But if you're just trying to express how your feel, and you think you've achieved that, then your music is a success, no matter how badly it does. Popularity and good art don't tend to walk hand in hand. It's a lot easier to be popular than it is to be good."     

 "I think Gong fans and people like Damon's parents--people who are quite involved culturally and are interested in a lot of shit that was going on in the late '60s--are going to really understand the record because it's free and it has its cosmic moments," says Coxon. "It's just the people in their mid-20s who will think it's a load of shit."     

 Even if 13 fails to capture the MTV generation, Blur will remain busily content with its extracurricular endeavors. Drummer Dave Rowntree, a former computer programmer, is working on high-tech computer animation. James is an airplane pilot and one-third of the novelty act Fat Les, which issued a top-charting football song last year on James' label Turtleneck. Coxon, who released the bizarre solo album The Sky is Too High last year on his own label, Transcopic, has been recording with Sin/ad O'Connor. And Albarn worked with Michael Nyman on the film score for the Antonia Bird flick Ravenous.     

 "Working with Michael has been so eye-opening," gushes Albarn. "I was trained classically when I was a kid, and now I think for the first time, I'm actually able to understand what I was taught. This kind of thing is so much more rewarding than being a rock frontman. I don't ever want to stop making music with my best musical friends [in Blur], but I don't want to become any more visual than I am now. I want to be more hidden behind my music rather than having my music hidden behind me. There comes a point in your life when you really want to be recognized mostly for what you create."

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