It’s always hard to write about bands you love too much too be unbiassed, bands that have been whole epochs in your life, have had impact on the formation of your musical preferences and generally on YOU! Yes, I have been and usually again “get under” Blur because they are just irresistible with their wonderful melodies, ironic and witty lyrics, creativity that makes their works art masterpieces and their ability to always stay Blur and only Blur no matter what they do…I always imagine Blur listener being a little bit weird, intelligent student, very well-grown up but when given freedom blows everybody’s mind out, a typical British so called middle-class representative which Blur themselves were associated with so often. Blur is never as blur as when it comes to defining their music: it is both Song-2 with so branded “who-hoo”s pouring overwhelming positive on you, and unsociable, tender Coffee & TV, funny and endlessly satiric Parklife and perfect instrumental Indian scented Out of time …If we consider Damon’s and Graham’s solo projects things will get even more complicated!

All these moods prepare you for their probably most experimental album 13, which has grasped all of Graham’s freedom, Damon’s honesty, Alex’s mystification and Dave’s drive. This is an unbelievable piece of art that could be placed in a museum to serve as encyclopedia into wonders of music both for classical music students and inveterate punks. And how it starts…with the best love ballad Tender I have ever heard in my life…so much sorrow and optimism in Damon’s fragile vocal united with gospel singing the most beautiful ode to love blessing and encouraging it no matter how painful it might be. One of the Blur’s best songs ever… A radically different edge of Blur is discovered in distorted and crazy Bugman where Graham just tortures the guitar to the last extent; a really nervous guitar invasion that ends up with Damon’s high and echoed vocal. Coffee & TV… I can talk of this song for hours… So solemn with its wonderful lyrics one of the best made by Blur and not less wonderful and touchy video that is just so cuuuuuuuuuute! It is perfect for moments when you feel alone and abandoned thinking of your last resort person, singing:

Take me away from this big bad world and agree to marry me so we can start all over again.

And again we fall into the crazy acrimonious howls of lewd Damon in Swamp Song seeming to mock at the love holiness as if it wasn’t him singing of it so gently and profoundly a few seconds ago. In 1992… I was just 7 years old, going to school for the first time and never thought that of a great song existing with that year’s name… A very depressive and disappointed song that seems a wandering in weightlessness somewhere in the space…

You need to spring off your soft seats again and yell with Damon absolutely absurd lyrics of B.L.U.R.E.M.I under the sounds reminding you of the cartoon hero Scrooge McDuck muttering….crazy…

Battle starts with space sounds, is in general very psychedelic and I don’t know why recalls Coldplay’s music in my mind. Damon is eager to battle someone here probably for the pain he felt then for his lost love. Mellow song, so lovely despite the dark lyrics, starting with Graham’s playing softly and Damon’s singing softly about that he’s a guillotine… and then the electronic guitars and drums “march in” with a medieval harpsichord; such an unimaginable mixture that can shock anyone but Blur listeners. Trailerpark is another weird song with hip-hop and even lounge elements mumbling all the time: I’m a country boy I got no SoulDon’t sleep at night, the worlds growing oldI lost my girl to the Rolling Stones.

Caramel…He repeats in fever I’ve gotta get better… so inaudible that you suddenly start thinking it’s just in your head, that it’s not real what you hear, like your unconscious ego hypnotizes your brain to survive, to go on…this fever ends up with electronic distortion as if awakening you from the hypnosis. It smoothly flows into Trimm Trabb a song where you sink into oblivion…Damon’s wonderful “s” of “This juSt the way it is” echoes in your mind until you find yourself under the onset of the strong guitar rolling and ending piano gliding…And then…again you feel all the pain of Damon’s love break up and the subsequent humility hoping that at least she is with someone who makes her feel that this life is alive…

No Distance Left to Run, an unexplainably touchy song with a bluesy guitar playing on your heart strings. And the video is incredible: shoot when the band is sleeping.

Optigan-1 is such a suitable ending to all this story-album with church bells ringing and some retro melody whistling…

So here it is…13…13 tracks of pure passion, fever, love, hatred, grief, pain and… life!

p.s. Oh, I used so much dictionary today to grasp the intellectual music world of Blur and present it to you the way i feel it in words and without them…

Blurredly, Manu