Blur

(Included on the album “13”, Parlophone, 1999)

A sadly underrated album, perhaps because it's sandwiched between what is unanimously regarded as the band's masterpiece, “Blur”, and the intriguing “Think Tank”. Perhaps because the huge variety of sounds on offer is disjointed and excessive. Perhaps because such a dense, paranoid record wasn't what anyone expected from Blur, even though, ever since “The Great Escape”, the band had already proven themselves to be a chameleonic outfit, far more accomplished and intense than the “britpop” label slapped onto their music might have suggested (which isn't to say britpop didn't produce anything good - quite the opposite - but rather that the genre was certainly trivialized, at the hands of other bands and, above all, the mass media).

Something had already clearly changed with the previous album, “Blur”: the band had definitively ditched the glossy sleeves, and the sharp britpop architectures had given way to a more mature, more intimate sonic exploration, with American-inflected ideas surfacing for the first time in their career, driven above all by guitarist Graham Coxon, who had pushed Albarn to seek out new musical shores to draw from and feed on.

It's an album easy to lose yourself in: there's the numbing sound of "Battle", "Trailerpark" and "Trimm Trabb", amid Albarn's onomatopoeic ravings; there's the ghost of Syd Barrett in "Mellow Song"; there's the hugely famous "Coffee And TV", in which Coxon drowns his attempts to quit drinking; and there's also "1992", where we find Albarn burying the last painful spasms of his relationship under a weight of memories, a relationship perhaps sacrificed in part to fame. His voice then vanishes, besieged by sounds and noises surrounding it on every side, literally smothering it, choking it.

The track that most closely echoes "1992" in mood and lyrics, and the one that generally draws the most attention on "13", is "Caramel". Perhaps because Albarn's voice becomes slurred, like someone lying on the ground desperately trying to get up, reaching their arms into the air, but with the only apparently calm resignation of someone who already knows they're alone. A murky, penetrating vocal performance, through which the singer pours out all the depression he lived through in that period. Altogether it sounds so dramatically real that it's impossible not to be drawn in.

Nothing seems able to soothe that kaleidoscope of memories, that silent shadow of his beloved Justine (leader of Elastica and his partner for 7 years), more a ghost born of thoughts and paranoia than a reflection of reality.

A sticky memory ("caramel") that struggles to slip away into oblivion.

But "Caramel" could also be referring to heroin ("brown"), which Albarn was heavily using at the time, as already documented in other songs, "Beetlebum" above all. Only in 2012, and with great reluctance, would he go on to say - in an interview with the "Guardian" - that the drug had actually "freed" him, especially on a creative level, although - he warns - "it's a cruel thing, it makes you a very isolated person".

In light of this, certain lines in the song seem to take on greater meaning ("Where is the magic?"), though more likely the two readings end up layered together, with heroin becoming a metaphor for love and vice versa. What finally emerges clearly is the overall context in which "Caramel" was written: a period of anguish and loneliness, of searching for answers, for light.

Hence the cryptic nature of the lyrics, which have all the feel of an interior monologue.

Musically, "Caramel" is evocative and experimental in nature: time stretches out, the sounds turn crooked, obsessive and commanding in their bittersweet melancholy, and the explosion at the song's centre has all the flavour of a catharsis or, perhaps, of an irreparable rupture.

The track actually ends at the 06:40 mark, but it's followed by two very brief ghost tracks: one that echoes the album's closing piece, "Optigan1", and another with a harsher, more distorted sound, complete with the noise of a car starting up.

There are two alternate versions of "Caramel": an instrumental one made during the recording sessions for "13", and a remix; neither has ever been officially released, but both are included on "Blur 21", the collection of CDs, DVDs and vinyl released in 2012 to mark the twenty-first anniversary of "Leisure", the band's debut album.

I've got to get over

Bibliography and sources:

Damon Albarn says heroin made him “incredibly productive”, The Guardian, 2014