Blur, Manchester Evening News Arena

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.

The setlist is conservative yet effective, with many tracks grouped together according to their particular era; it’s more single-led than the recent compilation would have us believe. Predictably, the crowd reserve their most ecstatic levels of enthusiasm for yob-rock staples such as the hollow ‘Country House’ (preceded by a rather ambiguous observation/analogy on the death of Michael Jackson) and a breakneck run through ‘Parklife’ with special guest Phil Daniels intact. Other than an overlong rendition of the arguably plodding ‘Tender’, it’s a tight, thrilling show. Constantly goosebump-inducing, to see Graham Coxon finally completing the jigsaw and adding spine-tingling melancholia to a previously Coxon-free ‘Out of Time’ is pretty special. Blur roly-poly through ‘Popscene’, delivered as if they’re the ferocious twenty-somethings of yesteryear.

Closing with the immense warmth of ‘For Tomorrow’, and ‘The Universal’ – a track now impossible to disassociate from British Gas marketing campaigns – it remains to be seen what their plans are after these summer dates. It seems somehow strange to see Damon Albarn intoxicated on verse-chorus-verse indie nostalgia after the massive eclecticism of his numerous side projects, but if they were to carry on where they left off at the start of the decade, a new album would be more than welcome.

The public anticipation (or great relief) directed towards the reunion reminds us that not one single chart-bothering band has emerged with one iota of the timelessness, natural giftedness, invention, wit and poignancy of Albarn’s combo during the largely piss-weak, polished, diluted, shallow, backwards and scenester-friendly 2000s UK guitar scene.

It has also been pleasing to note the instantaneous vanishing of the Kaiser Chiefs since the announcement of these gigs.