Blur: The Magic Whip review – friends reunited for a beautiful comeback

Blur’s made-in-Hong-Kong album, their first for 12 years, overflows with pretty songs and touchingly reveals a band now happily reconciled

There are two sorts of band re-formation. The primary is so compellingly simple that the “basic” bands that haven’t achieved it now seem weirdly anomalous. You bury your variations, a course of eased by the passing of time, the sagacity that comes with age and, ceaselessly, the promise of a whopping cheque: if the past 10 years or so have informed us something about musicians, it’s that few issues are as effective at resolving those bitter, decade-long feuds over guitar overdubs or backstage catering preparations or the drummer’s style in wives because the prospect of paying off one’s mortgage. Then you definitely rehearse, ebook exhibits, and knock out the hits, understanding the gang will probably be so overwhelmed by nostalgia they gained’t complain even when your singer feels like a man who’s clambered on stage at a karaoke night time after six pints, wrested control of the microphone and began bellowing down it, the Stone Roses having apparently reunited particularly to show this.

The second includes truly recording new material, and seems infinitely tough, fraught with the issues: not clumsily besmirching your personal legacy, making music that identifiably matches together with your again catalogue without merely showing to pastiche past glories. Certainly, it’s proved tough sufficient to deliver reunions to an end: Kim Deal left the Pixies; the Stone Roses and Pulp clearly decided it wasn’t well worth the aggro, while Jerry Dammers just lately famous that his want to report new songs was among the many causes he swiftly exited the reconstituted Specials.