It was telling that Blur announced their Wembley Stadium reunion shows well before they revealed the existence of this, their first album in eight years. The concerts taking place a fortnight before the release date also demonstrated that the gigs were not conceived as a promotional opportunity for the music, as they often are. No need for anyone to sprint to the bar every time Damon Albarn says: “Here’s another one from the new album.” In the end they only played two recent singles in a 26-song set.
That means that in person the Colchester quartet and their fans can bask in as much Nineties nostalgia as they want – part of a second summer of Britpop that has also seen Pulp and Suede flouncing triumphantly round the festivals – but there’s no pressure for the album to be stuffed with stadium-rousing hits.
Which it isn’t – apart from St Charles Square, where Graham Coxon’s guitar grinds manically and there’s a scream in the chorus that makes it a wild-eyed cousin of Song 2. The Ballad of Darren has a few other nostagic echoes of past work too. The listener is not really any wiser about who Darren is by the end, but he must be part of Blur’s line of British everybloke characters that stretches back to Ernold Same, Tracy Jacks and Colin Zeal.
The cover, a Martin Parr photograph of a Scottish outdoor pool, has an echo of the bathing beauty on the front of their 32-year-old debut album, Leisure, zoomed out to show something bleaker and chillier.
James Ford was the producer, who also worked on the recent Arctic Monkeys album The Car, and there’s a similar unhurried, melancholy, sophisticated feel to many of these songs. If, as Arctic Monkeys have found, you’re a young fan who’s only just discovered the zippy early stuff, you might be a bit bored, but if you’ve followed their gradual musical maturing in real time, it sounds spot on.
Even Barbaric, which counts as a bouncy one with its jangly guitars and a fun bassline from Alex James, has an undertow of sadness. “You have lost the feeling that you thought you’d never lose,” Albarn sings. The band must be well aware that on all those internet lists of the best Blur songs ever, it’s This is a Low, not Parklife, that always comes top. There’s plenty here that comes close to that song’s grand beauty, on an album that suits perfectly the Blur of today.
