Most criminals returning to the scene of the crime favour a surreptitious approach. Not Blur. They bowl shamelessly back into Hyde Park, location of their disastrously low-volume 2012 show, giving off an ebullient summertime vibe. Damon Albarn unwisely tries to distribute ice creams from an onstage van to the front row. Meanwhile, Nintendo visuals and slogans in Mandarin fill the screens, along with the neon ice creams of their eighth studio album, The Magic Whip, which was recorded in Hong Kong. Perhaps he is buying London’s forgiveness, one Flake at a time.
Blur in 2015 are an entrancing mix of caricature and challenge. At first glance they seem to be a modern-day Monkees, carrying out a tightly scripted exaggeration of their cartoon personas. Graham Coxon perfectly plays the ashamed-to-be-famous indie guitar hero, sabotaging Coffee & TV and Beetlebum with eviscerating noise. Alex James dandyishly thunks his melodic basslines, fag hanging nonchalantly out of mouth. And Albarn is in full Essex bovver-boy costume, pointing and bawling like a championship pub fighter – he races Phil Daniels across the stage during Parklife, stopping only for push-ups. Two new songs verge on charming self-parody, too: Lonesome Street echoes the oompah slouch of For Tomorrow (1993), and Ong Ong is the kind of sarcastically languid spoof of a Black Lace knees-up hit that you’d expect two decades after Girls & Boys.
Yet, arguably, they straddle their wildly disparate styles and phases better than any band in history, sprinkling the hits with a few rarely played album tracks such as the ponderous He Thought of Cars. They even test the Parklifers with intergalactic freak-outs Trimm Trabb and its glitchy new sister-piece, Thought I Was a Spaceman. These moments are as euphoric as the park-wide pogo to Song 2, or when 65,000 people roar along to the romantic angsts of Tender and To the End. As the brazen brass crescendo of The Universal peaks and Damon basks in the overpowering bombast and communal rapture, Blur’s brilliance hits home. Loud and clear.
