Blur Reunion Brings Glastonbury to Fitting Finale

Posted on Jun 28th 2009 6:50PM by Stephen Dowling
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On any other Glastonbury, it would have been the defining gig.

Blur were the Britpop era's poster boys, figureheads of a scene they quickly grew to despise, and which they left behind with a series of ever more adventurous albums.

But Blur rode out their wildest years only to dissolve when they were making their most inventive music, 2002's 'Think Tank'; singer Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon's previously close friendship combusted. It's taken this long for the rifts to heal, and it is Glastonbury they chose to give those repairs a public inspection.

Springsteen may have stolen their thunder, but Blur -- playing their first major show with their original line-up since the band went in to hiatus in 2000 -- don't take it lying down.

Albarn is a bit fuller-framed, and looked decidedly pugilistic in a black polo shirt and jeans -- exactly like the kind of man whose pint you don't want to spill down your local. Coxon is back where he should be -- wrestling the most unnatural of sounds out of perfectly ordinary guitars -- and Alex James poses and preens with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. It's like they never went away.

Blur don't make this a difficult reconciliation. Glastonbury gets the hits; a loping, luminous version of 'There's No Other Way' and a doleful 'Badhead,' dedicated to the festival's hangovers. There's Phil Daniels shouting his way through 'Parklife' and a 'Song 2' that surely breaks some kind of record for the loudest "Woo-hoo!" uttered on Planet Earth.