Blur, Manchester Evening News Arena

Blur

June 26, 2009

After a series of intimate gigs chosen for the nostalgic weight of their locations, Blur make the step-up to the MEN Arena tonight, prior to heading off to Glastonbury and London. After a prematurely-dated Klaxons set bereft of any new material whatsoever, the four-piece begin their show as they began their career back in 1990, with the dreamy if naïve ‘She’s So High’, an unremarkable baggy homage which then betrayed little of the invention to come over the next decade.

Instantly following with ‘Girls and Boys’, the track which arguably kicked the Britpop movement into fifth gear, it’s a hits-heavy set, with scant room for obscurity – although the devastating ‘Trimm Trabb’ and immensely funky ‘Oily Water’ (part of three consecutive choices from the underrated Modern Life Is Rubbish) are amongst the less well-known highlights. … Continue Reading