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

(Parlophone)
The first single from upcoming album The Ballad of Darren chugs alongside to a motorik beat, rising to an anthemic chorus that seems 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 considered one of Damon Albarn’s Africa Categorical events in 2019 – that are reliably rapturously acquired: a chance, as Graham Coxon lately put it to “revisit all those great songs”, full with a distinct emotional charge pushed 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 amongst Britpop’s massive league, prepared to vary and push ahead in a means their friends seldom have been, it doesn’t match Blur’s profile to reconstitute purely as a heartwarming exercise in nostalgia. But their precise 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, however solely three songs emerged, as restricted version singles; Albarn apparently called time on album sessions in 2012 halfway by means of recording, much to the chagrin of producer William Orbit. Albarn likewise recommended that the tracks recorded at impromptu 2013 periods in Hong Kong would constitute “a type of data that by no means comes out”, before Coxon completed the music in secret and invited the singer so as to add lyrics: Albarn appeared faintly stunned to be on the swiftly organized press conference that announced 2015’s acclaimed The Magic Whip.