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

(Parlophone)
The primary 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 stay exhibits – Glastonbury in 2009, a trawl all over the world’s festivals in 2012, a worldwide area tour in 2015, an sudden one-off performance at one among Damon Albarn’s Africa Categorical occasions in 2019 – which are reliably rapturously acquired: a chance, as Graham Coxon lately put it to “revisit all those great songs”, full with a distinct emotional charge driven by nostalgia and the proof that the once-fractured relationships inside the band have been mended. And then there's the difficulty of recording and releasing new material.

By far probably the most adventurous band among Britpop’s massive league, prepared to vary and push ahead in a method their peers seldom have been, it doesn’t fit Blur’s profile to reconstitute purely as a heartwarming exercise in nostalgia. But their actual recording process has been fraught since re-forming in 2008. Blur have been reported to have made three makes an attempt to report a new album, but only three songs emerged, as restricted version 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 steered 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 so as to add lyrics: Albarn seemed faintly stunned to be on the rapidly organized press conference that introduced 2015’s acclaimed The Magic Whip.