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From Britpop To Soul-Selling
04/05/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Dev Sherlock
The power-lunchers have been sufficiently ruffled. Unfortunately for them, a shoeless, baggy-clothed Englishman had to use the men's room. And that required him to traipse in his thick wool socks all the way through the busy dining area of this posh New York hotel and right past the open "chefs on display" kitchen, causing quite a stir in the process. Virtually oblivious to the commotion (despite some curt advice from one of the waitstaff), Blur frontman Damon Albarn eventually makes his way back to the more relaxed environs of the adjacent lounge, and to his abandoned shoes. "Ah yes," he exhales. "Where was I?"
As it happens, he was talking about 13, Blur's sixth and most adventurous release, and an album that showcases a band that's turned its back on both convention and outside scrutiny. Earlier this decade, Blur released a trilogy of remarkable pop albums (Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape) before slaying the golden Britpop goose with Blur, the American indie rock-inspired disc that yielded their biggest U.S. hit ("Song 2"). Now, finding themselves at a significant crossroads in their 10-year career, what do they do? They deliver their most challenging, and possibly least accessible, work to date. Like a stocking-footed man striding past your table at lunch hour, it's at once admirably ballsy and downright baffling.
But Blur are following their hearts. "It's a soul record," Damon insists. His comment's easy enough to believe if you just listen to the first single, "Tender." But that's deceptive. A spare, Stonesy blues number complete with handclaps and a 30-piece gospel choir, it's at odds musically with the rest of the album, which is more about Blur's version of '90s space-rock. Similar in a sense to R.E.M.'s Up, 13 is experimental, non-traditional, clearly the sound of a band trying out a whole lot of new ideas. "We just threw everything at it we could muster," acknowledges guitarist Graham Coxon.
First, the band made an important decision. Feeling they'd gone as far as they could with longtime producer Stephen Street, they chose to work with William Orbit (the electronic artist and producer who went overground this year after collaborating with Madonna), having been especially pleased with his remix of "Movin' On" from Blur. "It had reached a point with Stephen where I was teaching him how to get the sounds I wanted, and bringing in Slint and Tortoise records to show him," explains Graham. "We felt William was like a wizard, and we could learn from him. We figured, if nothing else, it would be interesting."
Interesting it was. Initial recording began in Damon's West London project studio, "13" (hence the album title), located in a former bus station. From day one, the band jammed (Damon prefers the term "improvised") around a set of extremely rough four-track demos. Orbit, meanwhile, sat in the tiny control room capturing every last note the band produced. "It was so intuitive," says Graham of the recording process. "And it was liberating because we were playing together like musicians used to--or still do, live. But it was new to us.
"There was this communication and, and...SOUL!" he continues, echoing Damon's earlier remark. "I mean, heaven forbid Blur make anything that was remotely soul music! But that's what it was, I guess. As soulful as Blur can get."
Still, it was all pretty loose, even by Graham's standards. "It was scary for a while," he admits. "It felt like we were going nowhere--the DATs were piling up in the corner and it was like, 'Sh-t! We've got all this music, but no songs.'"
Luckily, Orbit was there to sort everything out. He relocated the band to London's Mayfair studios for overdubs, then on to one of the largest mixing facilities in England, where he began cutting and pasting tracks, giving structure to the songs. With so many ingredients in the sonic stew, his ability to make sense of everything was crucial. "It could have ended up sounding completely chaotic," Damon says. "But he has a very clear sense of space and orchestration. In the past we've often had to discard parts to make songs more structured, but he wouldn't allow that to happen. Instead, all these parts that would never have made it onto a Blur record previously are now integral to it."
Coxon describes the process as one of building huge amorphous musical shapes around simple riffs, then stripping it all away to reveal the skeleton of an actual song where none had existed before. It all sounds a bit, dare one say, hippie? "Yeah!" replies Coxon, overjoyed. "The end of 'Caramel' sounds like a Gong record to me. And I think 'Coffee & TV' sounds like Caravan. But I like Caravan!"
Rest assured, though, Graham won't be spending any long weekends at Stonehenge in the near future. "No, no," he laughs. "We're city hippies." Still, a fair question might be, is this pot-smoking music? "I reckon it is," considers Graham. "It's definitely headphone music. I haven't smoked pot for a long, long time now, so I couldn't say. But perhaps I should try it."
As for the songs themselves, "1992" could have come off Blur's debut (in fact, the demo dates back to that very year). At about the song's halfway point, Graham plucks a note on his guitar that sustains and grows, continually echoing and feeding back on itself until it simply self-destructs, taking the song with it. "It's probably my favorite part of the whole record," says Graham. "I like the idea that a UFO has landed and destroyed the entire song."
It is one of several occasions where Graham gets to indulge his sonic whims, but at the expense of one of Damon's more sincere moments. "There are several occasions on every record where Graham and I fight about that," confesses Damon. "He'll want to take the song completely in that direction, but I don't want him to f--k my song up. The compromise is that we do half the song the way I want, and the other half the way he wants, and it usually works out."
Such is the also the case with "Caramel," a drifting, stoned-out lament that highlights Damon's soft-spoken lyrics for several minutes before Graham's Sonic Youth-ish guitar comes in and razes the tune to the ground. "But as long as the point of the song has been communicated by then, it doesn't matter," Graham argues.
Orbit, meanwhile, had plenty of interesting ideas of his own. The warbly vocal on "Battle," for example, is from Damon's original demo of the song. "I was on an island in Indonesia where the power supply wasn't very good," Damon reveals. "So my tape recorder wasn't working properly." But when Orbit heard it, he insisted it stay.
Such spontaneity reflects a new, surprisingly laid-back attitude in the Blur camp. A handful of longer-than-usual songs might lead one to question their quality-control process, while song titles like "Mellow Song" and "Swamp Song" even suggest unfinished demos. What follows are Damon's five consecutive (and unprovoked) attempts to justify this casual approach:
1) "I can't be bothered anymore about giving songs titles." [Pause]
2) "As soon as it sounds fine, I'm on to the next thing, man." [Pause]
3) "I'm not as finished as I used to be, not as clean-cut." [Pause]
4) "Well, there's too much to do, not enough time to finish anything!" [Pause]
5) "I mean, I'm just being practical..."
The only polite thing to do at this point is let him get away with it and move on. Damon lets out a comic sigh of relief, and laughs. "Okay, phew," he smiles. "Thanks."
But Damon isn't finished being elusive. Try quizzing him about the apparent suggestions of vice in the lyrics to "Bugman." "If you're out and about and having it large, as you do in the big city--you often meet the bugman," he offers. "You may even become the bugman." Is the bugman a drug? "Um, the bugman is a medicine."
Whatever it is, it isn't made-up. "No, it's not a character," he says firmly. "It's not like my old self--I'm not in character anymore, I'm me. I'm not hiding behind that anymore."
Doesn't that make songwriting more difficult? "It's more comfortable in the creation of it, but it's probably a little more uncomfortable talking about it, because it means that even vague allusions can result in severe misinterpretations," he explains. "It's also why I don't print lyrics anymore. I figure if you can't get the feeling across adequately with the song, then you've failed anyway."
One of the more obvious influences on Damon's lyrics was the end of his eight-year relationship with Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann. The subject seems to surface throughout the album, most notably on the moving album-closer "No Distance Left To Run." An even more desperate take on the sentiment of "Tender," it ranks alongside "This Is A Low" as one of the most gorgeously sad songs Blur have ever recorded. "Yeah, it's pretty brutal," agrees Damon. "They want to put that out as the last single in England. It's like, well, maybe if I can wear dark shades when I'm singing it. It's not gonna be easy to just sit up there and sing it."
The two years leading up to the making of 13 were stressful on Blur as a band. The heights they reached during the heyday of Britpop left them scarred and confused. Each member reacted differently to the attention, but they all developed serious drinking habits. They might easily have broken up had they not each found their own outlet. Drummer Dave Rowntree, ever the quiet one, eventually cured his penchant for the grape by earning a pilot's license and indulging his interest in computers and technology. Bassist Alex James remained the hobnobbing, ever-available drinking partner, working on a side project called Fat Les with some of his bibulous buddies. Coxon gave up alcohol for a while ("I was becoming a boozer again in the summer, but I'm quite relaxed about it now," he insists) and made a solo record, The Sky Is Too High, to maintain his creative sanity. And Albarn discovered Iceland, where he enjoyed peace, quiet, and a spiritual connection with the stark, glacial terrain (he has since bought property there, including a popular Reykjavik nightspot).
Even as they entered the studio last year, they were unsure where they were headed. Says Graham, "I think we all felt really uninspired. I wasn't listening to anything. My whole record collection had become just...boring."
But now, for the first time in years, everyone has come away happy with the new album and, most importantly, content with where the band is at. "Yeah," smiles Graham. "We're definitely all on the same spaceship now."
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