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 first is so compellingly simple that the “basic” bands that haven’t executed it now seem weirdly anomalous. You bury your variations, a process eased by the passing of time, the sagacity that comes with age and, incessantly, the promise of a whopping cheque: if the previous 10 years or so have informed us something about musicians, it’s that few things are as efficient at resolving these bitter, decade-long feuds over guitar overdubs or backstage catering arrangements or the drummer’s taste in wives because the prospect of paying off one’s mortgage. Then you definitely rehearse, e-book exhibits, and knock out the hits, figuring out 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 started bellowing down it, the Stone Roses having apparently reunited specifically to show this.

The second includes truly recording new materials, and appears infinitely tough, fraught with the issues: not clumsily besmirching your personal legacy, making music that identifiably matches together with your again catalogue with out merely showing to pastiche past glories. Indeed, it’s proved tough sufficient to convey 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 lately famous that his want to document new songs was among the causes he swiftly exited the reconstituted Specials.