Saturday, the first of Blur’s Wembley Stadium shows, sold out 90,000 tickets in minutes, and was by all accounts a triumph. Sunday’s extra date is not full, being noticeably roomy in the upper echelons. After referencing noted British movies including The Great Escape, Quadrophenia and The Italian Job across their 30-plus year career, was this second gig A Bridge Too Far? Damon Albarn seems up for the challenge. “Last night was pretty fucking amazing,” he says after spinning his way wildly through a thwacking Pop Scene. “But we can top that, right?”
Can we? Barbed new wave newie St Charles Square – cue some Chuck Berry-style duck walking from guitarist Graham Coxon – is a bold choice for an opener, but when 1991 indie-dance churner There’s No Other Way kicks in, we are off. This is a set of the tried and true, most notably in a mid-set seam of peak Britpop Blur, when we’re hit with End Of A Century, Sunday Sunday (during which Albarn gets into a giant kitchen cooker and does Rik Mayall-style expressive dancing), Country House (before which he enters a stripey roadworks tent and emerges in a deerstalker), Parklife (which sees original narrator Phil Daniels exit said roadworks tent to lead the chant with relish) and then To The End, which Albarn seems to sing to Coxon, having pointed out that they met when they were 12 and 13, and here they are playing Wembley.
Thanks to big screen technology, you notice just how much Damon and Graham seem to have come onstage dressed as each other, in glasses, suit jackets and jeans. The fraternal symbiosis of Blur’s two principals is expressed repeatedly tonight: after Coxon plays on a bluesy Out Of Time, from the Think Tank album he barely contributed to, Albarn gives him and then bassist Alex James – is that cigarette he keeps dangling lit? - a peck on the cheek. Albarn’s in emotional mood, alright: during Tracy Jacks he gets down in the crowd and seems to have a bit of a moment with a bearded superfan: as Beetlebum becomes a stadium singalong, Albarn seems wracked with emotion, and tells an audience member, “You fucked me up there, brother.”
Yet there are hits to play, and if we may be settled into a bulletproof back catalogue, there are still surprises and depths to reveal. Under The Westway is JG Ballard and Martin Amis by way of The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset, and again, Albarn spills over, wrung out and in tears as he sinks to his knees, with Coxon looking on and smiling tenderly. Throughout the night, Coxon repeatedly, effortlessly reminds you what a unique guitarist he is, cutting loose with discordant/melodic improv moves. The set ostensibly concludes with the majestic Little England melancholy of This Is A Low, with thousands of phone lights twinkling in the dusk.
There’s maximum audience participation for encore Girls And Boys, for which Albarn dons his Fila tracksuit top of old, and with the help of the London Community Gospel Choir, a beauteous Tender fully opens the emotional floodgates. Double glitter balls come to fulgent life for closer The Universal, leaving Albarn, a 55-year-old man in Fila, utterly wrung out as the applause dies away. The notion, or meaning, of empty seats seem very far away. As celebratory as it’s possible to be, it seems, tonight Blur filled Wembley to overflowing.
Setlist, Blur, Wembley Stadium, July 9, 2023:
ST CHARLES SQUARE
THERE’S NO OTHER WAY
POPSCENE
TRACY JACKS
BEETLEBUM
TRIMM TRABB
VILLA ROSIE
STEREOTYPES
OUT OF TIME
COFFEE AND TV
UNDER THE WESTWAY
END OF A CENTURY
SUNDAY SUNDAY
COUNTRY HOUSE
PARKLIFE (w.Phil Daniels)
TO THE END
OILY WATER
ADVERT
SONG 2
THIS IS A LOW
ENCORE:
LOT 105
GIRLS AND BOYS
FOR TOMORROW
TENDER (w.London Community Gospel Choir)
THE NARCISSIST
THE UNIVERSAL
Picture: Tom Pallant