Blur’s newest resurgence got here crashing down at Coachella 2024, the place the reunited quartet encountered an viewers detached and ignorant to the very notion of Britpop. It was a far cry from the crowds Blur discovered at Wembley Stadium a half 12 months earlier. Early in July 2023, simply weeks previous to the discharge of their comeback album, The Ballad of Darren, Blur performed a pair of reveals on the iconic London venue, greeted by punters primed to revisit the glory days of Cool Britannia.
The cavernous confines of Wembley could have been new territory for Blur however reunions are commonplace for the band. Within the waning days of the 2000s, they mounted their first return, regrouping not a lot later to play a Hyde Park live performance aligned with the closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics. Each of those occasions had been commemorated with the discharge of a memento double-live album, as is the 2023 present within the type of Dwell at Wembley Stadium, which can be accompanied by Blur: To The Finish, a feature-length documentary chronicling the band’s comeback. Obtainable in a plethora of codecs, Dwell at Wembley Stadium is finest heard in its double-CD/triple LP incarnation which incorporates the whole thing of the Sunday present, the second and last live performance Blur performed throughout its Wembley stint, a efficiency that carries a tangible sense of triumph: It is a band desperate to commune with its devoted followers.
These listeners had been able to bask in nostalgia, anxious to bellow “Parklife!” the second Phil Daniels hit the stage to as soon as once more reprise his starring function from 1994. From a sure angle, that’s exactly what Blur delivered, devoting their set to the hits and album cuts that comprise their core songbook. At least 16 of its 30 songs had been additionally featured on Parklive, the album commemorating their 2012 efficiency, affirmation that the Blur canon is pretty entrenched. As commonplace as these tunes could also be, the music feels significantly totally different than Parklive, a file that now performs like a jubilant relic of pre-Brexit Britain. Tempos are slower, significantly on such breakneck rockers as “Popscene” and “Advert,” there’s evident gravel in Damon Albarn’s voice, and Blur on the entire appears heavier, thanks in no small half to an added ballast within the rhythm part.
Such delicate variations are a part of growing older; particular person our bodies change, as does collective chemistry. Blur actually sounds older on Dwell at Wembley Stadium than they did on their earlier dwell albums, but these scars lend poignance to those acquainted songs. The erosion in Albarn’s voice diminishes his impishness, including a way of empathy to his cultural observations. That is very true in “Tracy Jacks” and “Finish of a Century,” songs written by a twentysomething questioning about “getting previous 40” and the way “the thoughts will get soiled as you get nearer to 30,” now delivered with a wistful air by a singer on the far aspect of fifty. Instrumentally, Blur accomplishes one thing comparable. They nonetheless can play “Track 2” with burly credibility but they appear mightier summoning cascades of psychedelic noise on “Trimm Trabb,” “Oily Water” and “This Is a Low” in variations that really feel earthy and chic.
It helps that, in contrast to many fashionable dwell information, Dwell at Wembley Stadium truly feels alive. Albarn fumbles lyrics on “Beetlebum” and “Nation Home” and turns into overwhelmed with emotion singing “Underneath the Westway,” an elegy to London. Graham Coxon’s gnarly guitar runs ramshod over the vocals, whereas the bass of Alex James careens throughout the regular rhythms of Dave Rowntree. The quartet appears thrilled by the clamor they conjure and so they’re in a position to channel that power into the ballads, offering a nervy counterpoint to the middle-aged melancholia that underpins The Ballad of Darren. The place that studio affair supplied an extended meditation on maturation, the live performance setting right here prevents prolonged reflection; there’s a crowd to contemplate, in any case. Blur however brings the bittersweet pulse to the forefront, significantly within the closing stretch that pairs current single “The Narcissist” with “The Common,” a music whose premonition of a numb, narcotized twenty first Century has come to cross. That shift within the tradition isn’t acknowledged outright however it’s felt, offering a wistful undercurrent on an album that’s a ripping leisure.
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