13

Blur: Damon Albarn (vocals, keyboards); Graham Coxon (guitar); Alex James (bass); Dave Rowntree (drums).
Additional personnel includes: Jason Cox (drums); The London Community Gospel Choir.
Engineers: John Smith, Jason Cox, William Orbit.
13 marks Blur hitting the 10-year mark as a band. During their first decade, the band went from being lumped in with Manchester bands such as Happy Mondays to becoming Brit-pop foils to Oasis. Their self-titled 1997 release found them inhabiting the same lo-fi neighborhood as American indie rockers like Pavement. On 13, the London based quartet joins forces with techno-pop producer William Orbit on a record whose inclusiveness manages to find room for both the gorgeous, choir-adorned "Tender" and "B.L.U.R.E.M.I.," a song that sounds like the illegitimate offspring of Wire, Devo, and Rick Dees.
Blur's work with Orbit finds them plunging deep into a lake of space-rock overflowing with wondrous sounds such as the pinging, Floyd-like tinkling, and hypnotic rhythms of "Battle," and the sputtering transmissions and bristling distortion permeating "Bugman." In straddling the dissolving lines between genres in the late '90s, Blur manages to trod the same ground as Underworld on "Trailerpark" and subscribes to the aforementioned jittery, lo-fi aesthetics on "Trimm Trabb." Despite all this experimentation, Blur still sneaks in perfect pop nuggets such as "Coffee & TV," where cheery harmonies share space with a squealing guitar.