Album Review: Blur, Live at Wembley Stadium

Blur’s two Wembley Stadium shows in July 2023 were the biggest live dates in their three decades-plus career, the quartet playing to 150,000 fans over two nights. It was the same tour that saw them light up Malahide Castle a couple of weeks before, the set-list similarly cherry-picking tracks from their latest long-player, The Ballad Of Darren, alongside gems from their lengthy back catalogue.

Thus, madcap opener ‘St. Charles Square’ is followed with ‘There’s No Other Way’, still sounding as fresh and vibrant as it did on 1991’s debut, Leisure, before the raucous punk of ‘Popscene’. It’s only on ‘Beetlebum’, the joyous singalong about heroin, where both band and audience get to take a breath and reflect, Damon Albarn insisting, “We’ve been waiting for this moment all our lives”.

And so it continues, a whistle-stop tour through the many stages of Blur, from the Cockney wide-boys of Modern Life Is Rubbish and Parklife to the narcotic malaise of Blur and 13, and on to their rebirth as elder statesmen of British guitar music.

The staccato, quasi-metal of ‘Trimm Trabb’ is a reminder of how grimy things got, as a wall of distorted guitar assaults the eardrums; it’s hard to reconcile this with the jolly knees-up of ‘Parklife’, complete with Phil Daniels’ guest appearance, and the mass singalong of ‘Girls & Boys’.

The album’s mid-section brims over with Blur at their bruised best, from the melancholy ‘Under The Westway’ to the gloriously dishevelled tear-jerkers, ‘Out Of Time’, complete with Spanish guitar interlude, and ‘To The End’, the most magnificent break-up song ever committed to tape. ‘This Is A Low’ is more proof that Albarn’s mob are at their best creatively when they’re at their worst, life-wise.

The gigantic ‘Tender’ sees them joined by London Community Gospel Choir, before ‘The Narcissist’ proves their songwriting chops haven’t dulled with age, and all that’s left is ‘The Universal’ to send the multitudes home singing.

A fine record of a band at the peak of their powers.

8/10