Blur: The Narcissist review – a band finally at ease with themselves

(Parlophone)
The first single from upcoming album The Ballad of Darren chugs along to a motorik beat, rising to an anthemic chorus that appears to be reflecting on the band’s career path

There are two sides to Blur’s sporadic reunions. There are the reside exhibits – Glastonbury in 2009, a trawl all over the world’s festivals in 2012, a worldwide area tour in 2015, an sudden one-off efficiency at one among Damon Albarn’s Africa Categorical events in 2019 – which are reliably rapturously acquired: an opportunity, as Graham Coxon lately put it to “revisit all those nice songs”, full with a definite emotional cost driven by nostalgia and the proof that the once-fractured relationships inside the band have been mended. After which there's the difficulty of recording and releasing new materials.

By far probably the most adventurous band among Britpop’s massive league, prepared to vary and push forward in a approach their friends seldom have been, it doesn’t match Blur’s profile to reconstitute purely as a heartwarming train in nostalgia. But their actual recording course of has been fraught since re-forming in 2008. Blur have been reported to have made three attempts to report a new album, but solely three songs emerged, as restricted edition singles; Albarn apparently called time on album sessions in 2012 midway by way of recording, a lot to the chagrin of producer William Orbit. Albarn likewise instructed that the tracks recorded at impromptu 2013 periods in Hong Kong would constitute “a type of data that by no means comes out”, earlier than Coxon accomplished the music in secret and invited the singer to add lyrics: Albarn appeared faintly stunned to be at the swiftly arranged press conference that introduced 2015’s acclaimed The Magic Whip.