Influential alt-rock Brits are back in focus
Blur talk about ‘Song 2,’ growing up and their first studio album in 12 years
After a gig in Japan got cancelled in mid-2013, Blur found themselves in Hong Kong with nothing to do.
“We went into this tiny little studio with no windows,” the band’s bassist, Alex James, says. “The mood was just right . . . there were loads of ideas flying around. We must have recorded 25, 26 songs.”
Over the span of five days, Blur jammed. The synergy was still there, James says. The session marked the first time in more than a dozen years since the band’s original four members recorded together. The result? The Magic Whip, which is being released this week.
“We’re treating it like an unexpected baby very late in a marriage,” James jokes from his sprawling farm in Oxfordshire, England. “We’re all over the moon!”
Crafting a distinctly British brand of alternative rock underscored by pop sensibilities, Blur was one of the architects of the Britpop movement. Formed in 1989, the band would go on to achieve massive success across the pond in 1997 with their eponymous fifth album and their grunge-fuelled single, “Song 2.”
Amidst infighting, Blur recorded their last studio album in 2003 before disintegrating. In 2009, they finally regrouped for a series of soldout concerts. The band has been touring together off-and-on ever since.
“This is three guys I’ve known since I was 19,” James, now 46, says of frontman Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree. “There’s something about playing with them that just makes the whole world disappear.”
The Magic Whip sounds quintessentially Blur. With distorted guitars, thumping bass lines and synthesized melodies, the record vacillates from lush to stark.
There’s a mature urbanity to it too: the aggression of their earlier work is gone, and in its place remains an often meditative soundscape that evokes the grit of Hong Kong’s neon-bathed streets.
James, who has achieved unlikely success as a food writer and cheese- maker since Blur’s heyday, seems to personify Blur’s1995 single “Country House” — a somewhat derisive tune about a city-dweller who escapes urban stresses for country living.
“It’s strange how many musicians do end up living on farms,” James laughs. “It’s an orthodox thing. You either write operas, you die or you live on a farm.”
Toronto fans last saw Blur perform in 2003. While the band has yet to schedule a North American tour for The Magic Whip, James has fond (albeit hazy) memories of our city. Their first North American show, after all, took place at Lee’s Palace in October 1991. “It was a banger!” James reminisces.
“There seems to be a recurring theme of us getting to Toronto and going absolutely bonkers. There was one night when Graham, Damon and I stayed up all night drinking and went straight into a heavy day of promotional activities.
“I’m surprised we’ve ever been invited back, actually!”