Blur She's So High

So here we are again.Three years after the 2009 reunion, and the obligatory Hyde Park DVD, we come again to 17 of the same songs (and 8 different ones), performed in the same field three years later. The stage may be slightly different, but nothing else seems to have changed.
But what is the point? If you're Damon Albarn sometimes his restless urge doesn't reflect experimentation as much as it does running away. As Albarn grows older, and inevitably richer, he seems to often forget the life people live in favour of abstract or meaningless. Here, tonights concentrated Blur shows that Damon needs someone to argue with him. Someone to tell him “No.” Much like Morrissey and Prince, Albarn needs something to fight against.

Blur is the fifth album by English alternative rock band Blur. Released on 10 February 1997 in the UK, it reached the top of the UK album chart. Blur was also a hit in the US, with "Song 2" becoming a hit there and the album being certified Gold. It also spawned several hit singles in the UK, most notably "Beetlebum" and "Song 2". The album's style was resultant of Blur's dropping their previous Britpop mantle in favor of lo-fi and alternative rock recordings, reportedly at Graham Coxon's urging. As a result, Blur was a hit primarily because it proved that Blur could evolve beyond their Britpop roots. The album's move from Britpop was emphasised by this being the first Blur album not to use Stylorouge cover-art and also not to have lyrics and chords printed in the liner notes, instead having a composite photo of the band in the studio spread out over three panels. The album featured the first song in which Graham Coxon not only wrote the lyrics, but also provided lead vocals, for the song "You're So Great". He would later do the same for "Coffee & TV" for Blur's next album.

Blur dissolved slowly so it follows that their reunion was protracted – a halting reconvening that produced understated singles and excellent concerts spread out over a period of six years. Finding a headlining appearance at Japan's Tokyo Rocks festival canceled in the summer of 2013, the band holed up in a Hong Kong studio for five days, producing several reels of jams they abandoned until guitarist Graham Coxon decided to shape them into songs with the assistance of producer Stephen Street, the collaborator behind their greatest albums of the '90s. It's an unwieldy history for The Magic Whip, a record that's casually confident and so assured in its attack it feels like a continuation, not a comeback.