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 fortunately reconciled

There are two kinds of band re-formation. The primary is so compellingly simple that the “basic” bands that haven’t carried out it now appear weirdly anomalous. You bury your differences, a process 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 advised us something about musicians, it’s that few things are as effective at resolving these bitter, decade-long feuds over guitar overdubs or backstage catering preparations or the drummer’s style in wives as the prospect of paying off one’s mortgage. Then you definitely rehearse, e-book exhibits, and knock out the hits, figuring out the gang might be so overwhelmed by nostalgia they gained’t complain even if your singer seems like a man who’s clambered on stage at a karaoke night time after six pints, wrested control of the microphone and started bellowing down it, the Stone Roses having apparently reunited particularly to show this.

The second includes truly recording new materials, and seems infinitely tough, fraught with the problems: not clumsily besmirching your personal legacy, making music that identifiably matches together with your again catalogue with out merely showing to pastiche previous glories. Indeed, it’s proved tough sufficient to deliver reunions to an finish: Kim Deal left the Pixies; the Stone Roses and Pulp clearly decided it wasn’t well worth the aggro, while Jerry Dammers lately famous that his want to document new songs was among the many causes he swiftly exited the reconstituted Specials.