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 sorts of band re-formation. The first is so compellingly simple that the “basic” bands that haven’t accomplished 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, regularly, the promise of a whopping cheque: if the past 10 years or so have informed us anything about musicians, it’s that few things are as effective at resolving those 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. You then rehearse, ebook exhibits, and knock out the hits, understanding the gang shall 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 began bellowing down it, the Stone Roses having apparently reunited specifically to show this.

The second includes truly recording new material, and appears 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 appearing to pastiche previous glories. Indeed, it’s proved tough sufficient to convey reunions to an end: Kim Deal left the Pixies; the Stone Roses and Pulp clearly determined it wasn’t well worth the aggro, while Jerry Dammers lately noted that his want to report new songs was among the causes he swiftly exited the reconstituted Specials.