13 | Loppylugs

Submitted by Neil Hornsey on 3 June 2014 - 10:21pm

Cover:

Artist:

Blur

album-ID:

a_151

Nationality:

Year:

1 999

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Tender*Bugman*Coffee & TV*Swamp Song*1992*B.L.U.R.E.M.I.*Battle*Mellow Song*Trailerpark*Caramel*Trimm Trabb*No Distance Left to Run*Optigan 1

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_59

Now-num:

2 014

Spotify-URL:

5YuZ4DjvtZBywtIbHIqtGJ

Grooveshark-URL:

13/1087328

Short-title:

nominator-ID:

u_13

Meeting-date:

Wednesday, 6 August 2014

MusicBrainz-URL:

307e8da2-8e8b-3bde-9324-5162501166d1

Wikipedia-URL:

13_(Blur_album)

Spotify-link-type:

album

Metacritic-URL:

13/blur

Discogs-URL:

Blur-13/master/34446

Allmusic-URL:

13-mw0000048461

BBC-URL:

b6bd

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review-form data

guest-list data

108

109

117

reviewers-IDs data

-13-

-1-

-14-

-2-

90

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Dragging Britpop out of the mire

3-4-6-7-10-11

A quite stunning album full of superb, diverse tracks, all well crafted and containing layers of atmosphere. Admittedly this is a very nostalgic album for me, and perhaps I notice it more than most, but the more I listen to it the more I notice small, clever guitar and synth twists and turns in the background. Caramel and Trimm Trabb remain two of my all time top tracks.
77

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Unlucky for some

1-9-11

3-4

People go on about the band’s middle class background, which I have to say I find unnecessary. Why should anyone care if anyone was born the right / wrong side of Leytonstone, it's all such feeble inverse snobbery and completely irrelevant to anything. Anyone with even a passing interest in the history of pop music will have noticed that white, middle class men are as capable of producing great stuff as anyone else and very often do, it's simply ignorant prejudice to try and claim that they are in same way disqualified from performing.

There is, however, something a bit irritating and unconvincing about Blur at times and that may be what people are trying to put their finger on. One of the things that is irritating is that they can so obviously turn out simple, effective, original, well constructed pop tunes but seem to choose to sometimes fanny about doing slightly messy, indigestible, not-quite-experimental stuff instead. It's a sort of jaunty, jolly / noisy combination that you can see getting up people’s noses.

When they’re good they're very, very good, when they're bad they're slightly embarrassing. Thankfully there is actually a fair bit of the former on here, I'm particularly fond of the opening number and ones towards the end are strong. It's a mix throughout of all sorts of stuff but enjoyable, so there.
70

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
60

reviewed by

Matthew Baker

Better than Oasis

3-11

I generally like Blur, I think Coxon is an excellent guitarist and they have always had a decent amount of variety over the years in their recorded output.

Coffee & TV is one of the best songs they have done, in my opinion.