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 around the globe’s festivals in 2012, a worldwide area tour in 2015, an sudden one-off efficiency at certainly one of Damon Albarn’s Africa Categorical occasions in 2019 – which are reliably rapturously acquired: an opportunity, as Graham Coxon just lately put it to “revisit all these nice songs”, complete with a definite emotional charge pushed by nostalgia and the evidence that the once-fractured relationships inside the band have been mended. After which there's the difficulty of recording and releasing new material.

By far probably the most adventurous band amongst Britpop’s huge league, prepared to vary and push ahead in a approach their friends seldom have been, it doesn’t fit Blur’s profile to reconstitute purely as a heartwarming exercise in nostalgia. But their precise recording process has been fraught since re-forming in 2008. Blur have been reported to have made three attempts to document a brand new album, but only three songs emerged, as restricted version singles; Albarn apparently called time on album sessions in 2012 halfway via 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”, earlier than Coxon accomplished the music in secret and invited the singer to add lyrics: Albarn appeared faintly stunned to be at the rapidly arranged press convention that introduced 2015’s acclaimed The Magic Whip.