Continuing the recent trend of “songs about the break-up of Damon Albarn and Justine Frischmann,” here’s the ground zero of that particular genre, the song in which Albarn offers up “It’s over/You don’t need to tell me” and the hearts of a million listeners who’ve never met either participant break as a result. Maybe it’s just because I first heard this track when I was going through my own horrible, protracted break-up – 13, the album this song closes, was the soundtrack of a terrible year or so of my life back then – but this song has always seemed devastatingly sad to me. There’s a sparseness, an emptiness to the instrumentation, and the music sprawls downwards prettily as Albarn sings his heart out in such blunt terms that it feels like evesdropping.
There’s such a sense of finality to the song (It finishes, “It’s over/It’s over,” after all) that it seems both fitting and uncomfortable to be placed as the last song (But not the last track; “Optigan 1” follows, an instrumental that floats in and out, dreamlike) on 13; it almost forces the listener to start the album all over again, considering that the song that starts the album comes, theoretically, after this one in terms of chronology and emotion (“Tender,” which is all about getting over a lover and rediscovering faith in love, or at least wanting to). To place “Tender” after this song would’ve made a lie of the title “No Distance Left To Run,” sure, but it would’ve been more honest in the grand scheme of things.