‘Tender’, ‘Trailerpark’, ‘Trimm Trabb’. That’s a strong set of songs beginning with ‘T’. All of them on Blur’s 13. Again, it wasn’t too long ago I wrote about a song from that album, so I’m trusting you can all remember how I feel about it. But for any new readers, it’s my favourite Blur record, I’ll leave it at that. A small number of songs from 13 would have dedicated posts on the blog in another universe. But in this one, like I usually say, the stars didn’t align, the timing wasn’t right. Other sayings along those lines. I didn’t get into a bulk of the album until 2015, by which time the ‘H’ section was the latest in this series. I didn’t even get into ‘B.L.U.R.E.M.I.’ until 2023. But considering this whole thing is covering songs I had on my iPhone between 2013 and 2021, the potential 13 posts would have gone to ‘Battle’, ‘Bugman’, ‘Caramel’, and if you want to make an allowance for the 2012 Special Edition, ‘All We Want’. Those are the ones for me.

13 is the musical encapsulation of Damon Albarn going slightly insane after the ending of a longtime relationship with Elastica front-lady Justine Frischmann. Drugs may or may not be involved. General mulling over heartbreak takes place. And ‘Trimm Trabb’ is the climax of it all. At least, that’s how I’ve come to see it. Here, the feeling sets in. Albarn is single for the first time in a very long while, and he can’t stand it. His fashion sense is in the pits, he lacks a general sense of urgency. He finds himself nodding off most of the time. He’s out in the town, sees drunken idiots around him, notices he’s wearing the same Adidas Trimm Trab trainers as the showy, stuck-up assholes in his vicinity. He’s become one of them. He has no one beside him when he sleeps at night. He has officially reached his breaking point, and it’s suitably symbolized by the screaming that occurs for the last minute-and-a-half of the music. By the end, he’s left a broken man as the dust rises from the chaos, leading directly into ‘No Distance Left to Run’ as the tearjerking comedown.

The thing I have with ‘Trimm Trabb’ is how uneasy it is from the get-go. The odd echoing keyboard, the distortion on Albarn’s voice as he recites the address of a hotel the band must have stayed amidst other indecipherable utterances and vocalizations. Underneath Graham Coxon’s jumping acoustic guitar chords and the head-bopping rhythm, there’s an underlying tension, no matter how smoothly Albarn delivers the melody over the top. The tension only gets tighter when the demented electric guitars come in after the spacey break, tighter and tighter it gets as Albarn repeats ‘I sleep alone’ until the cathartic screaming and awesome riffage marks its release. I tell you, after the twist, turns, interludes and experimental moments, it’s those screams – which you can hear looping over and over again in the middle of the madness – that capture the frustration expressed throughout the whole album. It’s not the last song on 13. It very well could have been. But it’s the last time a representative of the record will be talked about on this blog. Another to add to the list of albums out of here.