A conversation with Damon Albarn from 1999
The Blur frontman talks about saying goodbye to Britpop, the Offspring/Fat Les connection, and why bands who get compared to Can can never truly be like Can
Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the ‘90s and ‘00s and present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars. This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).
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THE OPENERS
This week at Stereogum, I spoke with John Davis of Superdrag, who many think of as a ‘90s alt-rock one-hit-wonder, but true heads recognize Davis as the Midwest’s most prolific power-pop craftsman this side of Bob Pollard. On Sept. 27, he’s putting out a great new album called JINX, which was supposed to be a new Superdrag album, and certainly sounds like it could’ve been a new Superdrag album, but became a solo release through a chain of events outlined in the Q&A linked above. We also talked about Snail Mail covering one of his songs, his love of SST Records, and why he hates album-anniversary tours.
Over at the Toronto Star, I stepped out of music-journo mode to speak with Elliot Page and filmmaker Dominic Savage about their collaboration on Close to You, a quiet yet compelling indie drama about a Torontonian trans man’s journey back to his hometown of Cobourg, Ontario for a family gathering that uncorks an emotional tsunami of unresolved resentments.
Here are some notes on the latest additions to the stübermania 2024 playlist (Midsummer Catch-up Edition):
Click here for the Apple Music version of the playlist.
I was really into Smog during the run from 1995’s Wild Love to 2000’s Dongs of Sevotion, but for whatever reason, I had tuned out of Bill Callahan’s by the time he started releasing albums under his own name in the late-2000s. So I approached his recently released live album, Resuscitate!, as an opportunity to get up to speed, but holy shit, it’s so much more than that. It’s one of those concert documents that—like The Who’s Live at Leeds or Nirvana’s Unplugged set—represents something greater than just alternate versions of familiar songs, by capturing a transformative moment that seems unlikely to be recreated again. Recorded last year in Chicago, it sees Callahan supported by a stellar backing band that includes guitarist Matt Kinsey, saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi, and Dirty Three drummer Jim White, who reshape his laid-back indie-folk solliloquies into stormy, psychedelic-jazz showstoppers, best exemplified by the sax-blasted 12-minute jam on “Coyotes.”
Speaking of songwriters I lost track of: Christopher Owens of much-loved but short-lived indie-pop favourites Girls has apparently been through hell and back since releasing his last solo record in 2015, but fortunately he’s come out the other side with his melodic gifts intact—“No Good,” the lead track from the forthcoming I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair (out Oct. 18), has that uncanny mix of dreamy jangle and deep-seated melancholy that make those Girls records so endlessly replayable.
Last weekend, I got to see Andrew McLeod, a.k.a. Sunnsetter, who, alongside his friend and frequent collaborator Daniel Monkman, a.k.a. Zoon, leads the Southern Ontario envoy in the current shoegaze craze. But Sunnsetter grounds his interstellar explorations in an earthy aesthetic: His recent single, “Try Again,” hits the sweet spot between Elliott Smith and Spiritualized. As for Monkman, he’s getting set to release the second album from OMBIIGIZI, the band he fronts with fellow Indigenous indie-rocker Adam Sturgeon, a.k.a. Status/Non-Status. The Kevin Drew-produced SHAME arrives Nov. 1., and you can sense his fingerprints all over the expansive and propulsive opening track “Laminate the Sky,” which, in true BSS fashion, encourages some hearty handclapped participation.
A sentence I never imagined I’d be writing in 2024: This new Maximo Park tune is pretty good! The Newcastle-upon-Tyne band may never full escape the specter of landfill-indie, but “The End Can Be as Good as the Start” is a welcome reminder that they always belonged at the top of the heap.
Geordie Greep of now-defunct UK art-punk weirdos blackmidi has just dropped “Holy Holy,” the surprisingly suave and swingin’ lead single from his upcoming solo debut, The New Sound (which I’m kinda disappointed he didn’t title I’m a Greep).
And finally: Blur’s Graham Coxon and The Pipettes’ Rose Elinor Dougall are back for another go-round with their art-pop outfit The WAEVE, whose second album, City Lights, arrives Sept. 20. The title-track single is a future-shocked strut coloured by Coxon’s famously freakazoid guitar-playing, a cinematic synth-smeared backdrop, and some shrieking sax-work, bringing to mind the more manic end of Bowie’s Berlin-era canon.
And speaking of Blur members getting freaky…
THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Damon Albarn from 1999
Date: April 7, 1999
Location: The Cambridge Suites hotel in downtown Toronto
Album being promoted: 13
The context: You know how when you come back from a vacation, and someone asks you, “well, how was it?” and you launch into an extended play-by-play of every activity, meal, and historical landmark you experienced while you were away, and then the next day a second friend asks you, “well, how was it?” and you give another play-by-play that’s still enthusiastic if not quite as detailed as the first, and then a few days later when the 20th person asks you, “well, how was it?”, you’re just like, “um, it was alright, I guess”? That’s how musicians feel after spending two days in a hotel suite being asked the same questions about the same topic over and over again. And those were the circumstances under which I interviewed Damon Albarn.
I was Damon’s final scheduled interview at the end of a two-day promo blitz in Toronto for 13 that included an exclusive show at The Palais Royale for 500 people, and an Intimate & Interactive appearance on MuchMusic where Damon looked like he’d rather be doing anything else in the world than field questions from Bill Welychka and the assembled fans. Word among local journos who had interviewed Damon on Day 1 of the press tour was that he was a bit prickly, particularly if the line of questioning veered into the personal drama that inspired 13, which could’ve easily been titled Death of a Britpop Power Couple. So my strategy was to just avoid anything that might set him off—you may notice the conspicuous absence of the word “Justine” in the following transcript. After all, I was doing the interview for a 600-word piece in a Canadian teen periodical (the previously discussed What! A Magazine) that maybe would’ve read by 20 bored high-school kids during their lunch hour—Nick Kent, I was not.
I stuck primarily to the big-picture topics that seemed to pop up in a lot of my conversations from this time. Revisiting all these 1999-era conversations for this newsletter has made me realize how much I used to approach these interviews like I was drafting a concert setlist—certain recurring questions would settle into the repertoire for a period of time, before being replaced by a new set of topical talking points. In this case, that meant more questions about the internet, the new millennium, and why bands can’t release two or three albums a year like groups in the ‘60s and ‘70s. (I seem to bring that last one up a lot in my interviews. I think it was my way of trying to get bands to shit-talk major labels.) Given that 13 marked Blur’s transition from Britpop hitmakers to experimental-rock musos, I tried to get on Damon’s good side by name-dropping Can, Silver Apples, and Wire at regular intervals. And, this being a converastion with a British musician in 1999, there was at least one mandatory question about The Beta Band.
I was kinda dreading it going in, but in the end, the interview went totally fine—a solid 7/10 experience. Damon maybe wasn’t in the most excitable, chattiest mood, but he was perfectly chill and gracious, and cracked at least one enema-themed joke.
I was just reading that Universal and BMG are joining forces for a new digital-music distribution site. Do you still think the internet will be a great force of democraticization for music?
Well, it won’t be if the multinationals get involved with it. It’s the same thing with how there was a brief period of indie record labels, and then they just got all bought up by multinationals.
Do you foresee the day when Blur can operate independently of the multinationals and distribute mp3s directly to fans, without having to engage in the promotional grind?
I don’t really care so long as I’m allowed to make the music I want to make. I might do this sort of [promotional] thing for weeks on end, but two months of a year taken up doing this is not that big a hardship.
I was wondering: Is the song “B.L.U.R.E.M.I.” born from the sense of feeling like you’ve been absorbed by a corporation, where you can’t separate the artist from the label owner?
Well it is, but… the song starts with: “group using a loop from another pop group.”
Is that an indictment against sampling?
No. It’s just… When I write songs like that, it’s not an indictment or anything, it’s just playful, really. It’s not really saying “Blur Are EMI!” That’d be a really grand statement on our behalf.
I saw your show at Glastonbury last year, and it felt like we were witnessing the end of the populist version of Blur…
Yeah.
But it’s funny: You played all the big hits, yet you finished up with songs like “Death of a Party” and “Essex Dogs,” which seemed to puzzle a lot of people…
Well, you know… I mean, we made a graceful exit, and now we’re in a total different arena, which is just starting out, so it’s a whole new dynamic onstage. It went from being very frenetic, and getting the energy level up by being very energetic onstage, whereas now, the thing I try to put the energy into is my voice. I’m completely static!
Well, you were still moving around a little bit last night…
Yeah, but my voice is a lot stronger. So the whole thing is much more coming from there. I’ve just changed gears. I find you have to stand still to really sing well.
13 is a very personal and experimental record, but onstage last night, it adapted really well to a live communal setting. Are you at the point now where it doesn’t feel like your record anymore—it belongs to the people?
That’s what always happens. You can never keep something to yourself for that long.
But is it unnerving to sing these really emotional songs onstage and have the crowd shrieking back at you like a Robbie Williams concert?
Oh, it’s not that bad! I know what you mean, but… it’d be weird they didn’t.
By playing small venues like the Palais Royale last night, are you trying to get back to your early days, when you’d host these special events in art galleries?
I have to say I do prefer playing small places. It’s much more enjoyable. People see your face, and sometimes your face is more expressive than all the big movements. I don’t mind playing the odd one like Glastonbury, but as a career, I wouldn’t want to do it all the time.
Do you see yourself doing more one-off experiments like what you did last year at the Meltdown Festival with the Silver Apples?
I just want to keep experimenting—it really is the spice of life.
How do you plan on spending extra time off not touring?
It’s not about not wanting to work, it’s basically about want to work more at home.
It’s almost like this record is the exorcism, and now you’re free…
There’ll be another exorcism. It’s one of those things, like an enema—you can’t just have one!
Do you see yourself operating more like a band in the ‘60s and ‘70s, where they could put out two or three albums a year, and get better with each one?
Yeah, I hope so. People aren’t allowed to develop naturally, because of the whole way a record gets built up…
Where you have to put out five singles, do three world tours…
Yeah, you miss out on very vital points where maybe you’d like to make a very delicate, odd album, and instead you kind of overlook that and go for the big, robust record each time. I’m a working musician, I love making music, so I can’t just put something every four years.
You’ve expressed much admiration for Can—not just the music, but how they’ve managed to be very influential yet completely faceless at the same time.
They’re perfect the example of a band that can do what they want when they want.
Do you think Blur could ever achieve that? Even with a record as experimental as 13, you’re still getting the tabloid treatment in the press…
Yeah, I know. Once you become public property in that sense, you’re never going to lose that.
Did you ever think Blur came of age in the wrong era? Like, if you were around in 1979, your contemporaries might be bands like Wire and The Fall, and maybe you wouldn’t be subject to the same media scrutiny. Or is that just the price of being good looking lads?
I suppose it is… we’ve got to work a little harder than most people when you attract that sort of attention, because the day is not just full of what you want to do, it’s full of other stuff. When you’ve got to talk about your personal life all of the time, it’s a bit distracting, really. And all you want to talk about is anything other than that.
Do you think the ‘90s were a good or bad decade for music? In hindsight, it felt like a very retro era in rock ‘n’ roll…
The thing I’m so pleased about this record is it’s not retro in any sense, and that’s good… it’s good that we actually had one record this decade that isn’t retro!
Is there any sort of pre-millennium statement happening on this record?
No, I was into the millennium years ago. Modern Life Is Rubbish and The Great Escape were a lot more about millennium fear. I got it out of my system.
Are there any pop culture trends you find particularly troublesome these days? Is laddism still a thing in the UK?
Oh yeah, it’ll always be there, but it’s nowhere near what it used to be.
Over here, we have this weird flipside to that… I don’t know if you’ve seen the new Offspring video…
It looks like Britpop to me! It sounds like Britpop, and it’s got a Britpop video. It’s extraordinary that a band like that would do that—they’re the last people on Earth you’d imagine would do that. The video is like a Fat Les video, they’re all marching down the street.
Oh, you’re talking about the “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” rip-off song. I was about to mention the video they put out before that, which had this chorus line of dancing girls in bikinis, but they can get away with it by saying, “it’s not sexist, it’s ironic.”
What they’re doing is what British bands were doing five, six years ago, which is trying to make ironic statements. It looks to me like something that was happening in England years ago. I think it’s quite hilarious kids who would’ve despised Parklife now like Offspring. It’s funny, isn’t it? I’ve always seen it happen with ska and punk, where years later, the Americans start to get into it, but I never thought it’d happen with Britpop!
Early on, around the time of Leisure, you said you wanted to bring some British culture to America, because you were sick of the McDonaldsization of Britain. But the first song of yours that the US truly embraced was “Song 2,” which was basically a simple metal riff and a quick soundbite. Did that experience make you realize the fallacy of trying to appeal Americans?
I mean, American culture is far too self-obsessed to really cut through. Even the electronica thing kind of fizzled out already, didn’t it? That was heralded as the next big thing.
Well, Prodigy and the Chemicals Brothers sold well here—but the real effect wasn’t that we saw a bunch of new electronic acts, it’s that every rock band started putting loops on their records…
It’s a very surface thing.
You said that you wanted 13 to be less ironic and more honest. But I find there’s an absurd sense of humor running through it, too…
Yeah, there aways has been. I can’t help that. That’s just life. It’s important to keep a sense of perspective—even in the most miserable moments of your life, there’s something to laugh about. I could never make a record that was, from beginning to end, one huge morose thing.
The song order reinforces that—“No Distance Left to Run” could’ve been the grand, dramatic finale, but then you have this loopy instrumental after that…
It pisses off a lot of people that we do that, but that’s what we are. If you can accept that “No Distance Left to Run” is quite a moving song, and then after you have something that’s a bit silly, are you not going to take the [previous] song as seriously because there’s something else after?
Having “Optigan 1” right after “No Distance Left to Run” reminds me of what George Harrison did on “Within You Without You,” where you have this very serious, spiritual song, followed by a burst of laughter.
Yeah. That’s a very English to do.
I was wondering if working on the score for Ravenous affected this record…
I did the two concurrently, and looking back on it, it was ridiculous: trying to a film score and an album, each day on the same day. I’d start on the film score in the morning at 9:30 and finish about 1 o’clock, and then I’d drive to another part of London and work on the Blur album until about 10 o’clock at night, and then go out.
Word has it that 13 started in a similarly folky direction…
No, not really. Sometimes, I really wish I could play my demos in interviews and explain… but I always lose them. I’m really stupid! I’ve got to stop discarding the works-in-progress. They’re important.
What records are blowing your mind these days?
A lot of Cuban compilations…
Have you heard the new Beta Band record?
No, I haven’t. I’ve got The Three EPs. I’m sure it’ll be great. They’re one of the few new bands I’ll bother listening to at the moment.
They have that same degree of facelessness we were talking about earlier.
Yeah. I mean, they’re not Can. They sound a bit like Can on occasion and they are cool, but they’re not Can. Anyone you’re comparing to Can while they’re still going is never going to be Can—the band that’s going to be Can in the future is the one that no one’s really talking about now.
ENCORES
When it was released in 1999, I gave Blur’s 13 an over-the-top five-star review in Eye Weekly, and while that particular piece of writing has disappeared to somewhere even the Wayback Machine can’t locate, I’d likely still agree with whatever I wrote. For me, the album stands as the missing link between two towering Brit-rock works of the era: Spiritualized’s Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space and Radiohead’s Kid A. And the follow-up non-album single, “Music Is My Radar,” might be my favourite Blur A-side of them all, as it takes the Can worship of 13 deep cuts like “Caramel” as its starting point and follows the German masters into the discotheque.
Parklife turned 30 earlier this year, and it contains my favourite Blur deep cut of them all—the Ziggyriffic “Jubilee”:
13 arrived in the midst of this strange and beautiful post-Pavement/pre-Strokes moment in indie/alt-rock, where the slacker stylings that dominated the first part of the ‘90s gave way to a more forward-thinking approach informed by post-rock, electronic music, dub, and other record-collector curiosities. The playlist below provides a snapshot of this transitory era. (Click here for the Apple Music version.)
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30 years old. Jesus. Yes, those horns on Jubilee* are banging.
Sadly, that was the last gasp of rock. The sixties pantry got raided, and some great music was made. Rifling the drawers of the nineties doesn’t cut the mustard.
* Oddly enough, I mentioned this tune here just yesterday.