Tag Archives: 13 album

#1344: Blur – Tender

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My first impression of the studio version of ‘Tender’ wasn’t one of a positive note. After seeing music videos for Blur on the television quite regularly in the mid-2000s and liking nearly every song that came along with them, I was brainwashed into requesting Blur: The Best Of, I think, for my 11th birthday in 2006. On it was all the good stuff. ‘Beetlebum’, ‘The Universal’, ‘Girls & Boys’. You know, the singles. But there was ‘Tender’, a song that was almost eight minutes, right in the middle of it all. Eight minutes more or less feel like 30 when you’re 11, especially if you’re trying to focus on one thing for that amount of time. I was bored. Might have even fast-forwarded through it. But it might have been the music video for it (below) that made me come around to the song. It’s a live performance. The band play the track with a lot more gusto, the London Community Choir really make their presence known when it’s their time to sing, That, I could work with. It took me a long time to come round on the tune as it appears on 13 as a result.

13. The Blur album heavily influenced by Damon Albarn’s breakdown after his breakup with longtime girlfriend Justine Frischmann. It’s the band at the most experimental and downright insane at times, and it’s my favourite of Blur’s. ‘Tender’ starts it all. I think it and ‘No Distance Left to Run’ are the two tracks on there that tackle the breakup subject head-on. While the latter captures Albarn probably at the point where the split has just happened and left him devastated, ‘Tender’ seems to depict him where enough time has passed but he’s still left waiting for love to come his way again. A lot of sadness links the two tracks together, they’re almost like sister songs, but that tone of determination and optimism from ‘Tender’ allows it to seem much more upbeat than it really us. Plus it’s played in a higher tempo, so that would obviously help too. The proceedings are aided by Graham Coxon’s lyrical section, a chorus in itself, “Oh my baby, oh my baby, oh why, oh my”, that is usually repeated by thousands of concert-goers for minutes on end after the band finish playing it live. It’s like a national anthem, almost.

So, yeah, almost eight minutes this song goes on for and it starts the album off. I see comments online that openly admit to beginning 13 with ‘Bugman’, feeling that ‘Tender’ is out of place and gets things underway too slowly and preferring the song under any instance it’s done in a live setting in comparison. I’ve come to appreciate the studio ‘Tender’ and the live ‘Tender’ in their own respective ways. But honestly, I can understand those people’s sentiments. You can hear edits in the studio track where a verse is cut off to make way for the guitar solo (about four minutes in). At 5:17, the percussion cuts out quite sharply to make way for Albarn’s arriving vocal. For the meditative, contemplative track ‘Tender’ is, it can get quite messy production wise. But then again, 13 is a very messy album in a great, great way. So in the context of it, I think ‘Tender’ is a fine opener. Plus, it’s all the more better being followed by ‘Bugman’, because its buzzing guitar hitting your ears right after ‘Tender’ fades out is the big sign that the album won’t be quite what you’re expecting.

#926: Blur – No Distance Left to Run

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Damon Albarn and former Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann were sometimes labelled the ‘King and Queen of Britpop’ during that time in the ’90s when that whole movement was happening. They were a couple through and through until they broke up in 1998, leaving Albarn traumatised and incredibly bummed out by the ordeal. The fallout of that, plus a dependence on heroin and straining relationships within Blur resulted in 13, the group’s most experimental album, possibly their most sonically adventurous too. It truly goes off the deep end about four songs in and onward. So when ‘No Distance Left to Run’ comes in as the record’s penultimate track, it enforces a sound of band that really has nothing left to give.

The song has to go down as one of the saddest in Blur’s catalogue. It’s about the dreadful realisation that a relationship’s over, one that a lot of years went into with a lot of heart, and tearfully wishing the other person all the best with someone else while you’re all alone and left wanting to die. I may have exaggerated a little bit on that last point. But it’s clear that Albarn wasn’t in the greatest of places while recording this. His trembling vocal take alongside Graham Coxon’s weeping guitar are the highlights throughout. In the band’s 2010 documentary, named after this track as a matter of fact, Coxon mentions that Albarn never told the bandmates what was going on, but it was quite obvious that things weren’t good. So he tried to make a riff and some chord progressions that would match whatever words Albarn wrote down. Fair to say he does them justice. I do particularly like the spacey instrumental in the middle, with those twinkling keys that pan from left to right alongside those smooth ‘ooh’ vocals. I thought it was a choir doing them, but I upon further research it seems they are done by Albarn and Coxon, or Albarn double-tracked. Whatever way, it’s good listening.

I wasn’t properly living around the time of this album’s release or thereafter. Would have been very young at the time. But looking back as a Blur fan and reading up on stuff, ‘No Distance Left to Run’ could very much have been the band’s last track on an album. One on which there’s singing anyway. Going into the new century, it seemed that the group wasn’t sure where to go, releasing a ‘Best Of’ compilation. Then Damon Albarn put more focus on Gorillaz, and forged a whole other path of success. But thankfully that wasn’t the case, and two more Blur albums were made. Let’s hope there’s another soon.

#825: Blur – Mellow Song

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13 is one of my favourite albums of all time. Definitely one of my Desert Island Discs if that programme asked you to list what records you would take if you were in that situation. Even I feel exhausted after listening through the 66 minutes the thing lasts for. Could you imagine how the band members felt making this? Well, it’s documented that individually they weren’t having the greatest of times leading up to and during the making of the album. Damon Albarn had broken up with his long-term girlfriend Justine Frischmann of Elastica and was somewhat hooked on heroin, Graham Coxon was drinking and angry at the world, people were fighting, not turning up to sessions. Sounds tense. But they still came out with this masterpiece. That’s right, I said it.

‘Mellow Song’ is what it says it is. It’s a four minute break from the chaos and disorienting noise that surrounds it, even though it kicks up a bit during its instrumental outro. The first half of it has Damon Albarn singing in his dulcet tones. I think it’s capturing him in the aftermath of his break-up. All he does is spend time in bed, hungover, taking drugs, or making music. And this is him singing about it in a sort of surreal and poetic way. He plays these arpeggiated notes on the acoustic guitar that move up and down the fretboard accompanied by these twinkling/ghostly keyboards and when he sings the last “We’ll see”, the song transforms into this trippy, bass-heavy instrumental jam. Like I said, it is a nice… wouldn’t say relaxing, but it’s something you can really get lost in with the right state of mind.

The instrumental jam has a lot of musical goodness too. Coxon plays this four note pattern that repeats and repeats while Albarn plays a melodica solo. A guitar overdub where Coxon plays these random notes and bends takes over as a harpsichord suddenly appears in the right hand side. There are clips of Albarn laughing or crying (I’m not sure which) buried in there too. It all goes on and on until it all sort of fizzles out and comes to a stop with a lo-fi recording of Albarn laughing. It sounds better in the context of the whole album because the next starts suddenly right after that. 13‘s great. If only I could have written about ‘Battle’.

My iPod #197: Blur – Coffee & TV

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“Coffee & TV” is a track by Blur from the band’s sixth album “13”. It was written and sung by guitarist Graham Coxon, who is joined by Damon Albarn in the chorus.

I’ve known this song for a long time, even though I didn’t listen to all of Blur’s discography until earlier this year. That’s only because it was a single, and a lot of people know it for its memorable video directed by Hammer & Tongs.

I can’t really listen to this song without thinking about that milk carton. The music video has nothing to do with the message of the song, which is more about wanting to break away from uncomfortable social situations and living the simple life without any worries, but it just fits. I couldn’t imagine the song having any other video.

Did you know that the solo in the song wasn’t even meant to be in the final version of the song? Apparently it was a placeholder until Coxon could think of something better, but it just got to the point where they couldn’t because it was too late. That’s a good thing to bear in mind.

Enjoy.