MTV Remember earlier in the decade when Blur and Oasis were locked in a pissing match over which band ruled the roost? Nowadays, it seems so pointless, not just because Oasis proved one album after their breakthrough to have reached a creative dead-end, but because Blur has since metamorphosed into a totally different monster altogether. It's a transformation that started with 1997's Blur, as the quartet veered from its very Anglo, very mod pop ways to a more Amer-indie sense of raggedness, best demo'd on the wildly combustible hit single "Song 2." Still, fans could not have predicted the reincarnation that 13 represents. Suddenly, Blur is a strung-out, supersonic monster with fuzzy and/or woozy guitars, loose grooves, dissonant vocals, and huge amounts of unstructured slop that sounds as if the band exploded in the studio. But it's often very exhilarating, like on the speaker-frying fuzz-rock of "Bugman" and the Bowie-gone-dub "Trailerpark." That coupled with the album's three most direct moments -- the ambitious gospel-folk opener "Tender," the Velvet-pop of "Coffee & T.V.," and the blues dirge "No Distance Left to Run" -- makes 13 half-great. Unfortunately, it's also half not-so-great, as Blur often turns too oblique and formless for its own good. Really, 13 is akin to the artwork of a painter who flings paint onto canvases from afar. Sometimes it's brilliant, but sometimes it's best hauled off to the basement.