You can practically hear the grin on guitarist Graham Coxon's face on

Blur's new record, 13. He's given more opportunities to work his

distinctive, off-kilter riffery than on any other Blur album, and that's

precisely what keeps 13 from becoming unbearably sad and dirgy.

Not that Damon Albarn is known for his happy numbers, but he's never

produced a crop of songs quite so murky before. A brutal break-up with

Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann has thrown him for a loop, and

the third-person character sketches of previous albums, along with

Blur's more veiled sentiments, have been replaced by a kind of

fuzzy soul-baring.

Which is all to say that we're a long way from "Girls and Boys" and

"Country House."

13 is very nearly a logical extension of '97's Blur, which

showed the band moving out of Kinks territory and trying to set up shop

next to Pavement and Sonic Youth. That they succeeded is a testament to

just how strong a band Blur is -- few of their peers can claim to have

switched directions so fluidly and with such good results. With one lone

Bluresque song thrown in for good measure -- "Look Inside America,"

which cunningly invoked three or four earlier tunes -- Blur

earned the band its first American frat-house hit, the purposefully

generic "Song 2," on their least accessible album.

That is, until 13. Methodical, often sprawling and sonically

messy, 13 isn't a charmer, but it is awfully seductive. Several

songs seem to go on forever, caressing new patterns out of thumping,

hazy riffs -- "Bugman" sounds like a "Song 2" follow-up until the end is

extended past modern-rock radio attention spans, stretching out the

thuggery into something more menacing.

"Tender," the first single and album opener, is very nearly ludicrous:

Albarn sings in his most unsteady voice over a gospel choir. Somehow it

works, with the choir supporting its weak leader as the song's three or

four refrains repeat around each other. "Coffee & T.V." would be a

natural for the next single if it weren't for Coxon's ungodly solos

during the long, measured fade-out. There's so little that's melodic

about what he's doing to his guitar, and yet it's still so exciting --

he's got no business playing like that over what's basically a pleasant,

midtempo acoustic pop song (the album's only real one), and he somehow

pulls it off.

One wonders what producer William Orbit had to do with all this. He's

currently known as the Man Who Saved Madonna, having produced Ray of

Light, but the real Blurheads will know that he did the majority of

the remixing work on Blur's Bustin' + Dronin' from last year -- a

relatively uninspiring remix of tracks from Blur. There's plenty

of play on 13 and not a lot of the discipline that characterized

Parklife and The Great Escape -- if nothing else, Orbit

left Blur with plenty of room to move.

That they ended up with an album of songs that recall "Theme From Retro"

far more than "Parklife" or "Song 2" isn't a bad thing at all. Albarn's

newfound personal songwriting combined with Coxon's relentless

inventiveness, even unrestrained, can produce some pretty remarkable

stuff. It's not a lot of fun to listen to, but it's ultimately the most

compelling music Blur have yet made.