Blur (Malahide Castle, Dublin)

There’s a point around five songs into Blur’s Malahide Castle set when the gap between band and audience seems sizeable. Not a physical space, as the long-sold-outness ensures there’s barely room to rhumba without stepping on someone’s sandal, the weather gods having blessed us with beautiful sunshine all day. But on stage Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree are blasting out the blue-collar punk of ‘Trouble In The Message Centre’ from 1994’s Parklife, and most of the crowd are quietly sipping their Dutch lager and talking quietly amongst themselves.

When did Blur turn from snot-nosed Cockney upstarts to entertainers of the middle-class? Perhaps it’s partly due to the venue, the well-heeled and relatively-hard-to-get-to suburban village of Malahide ensuring the crowd were more Dublin 4 than Dublin Bus. Or maybe we’ve all just grown up and gotten old since the heady days of Britpop. But the atmosphere is definitely a little on the non-fizzy side.

Sure there’s a singalong for ‘There’s No Other Way’, Albarn draped in a tricolour thrown from the pit, but when the singer asks “Have you brought your voices?” before launching into ‘Chemical World’, there’s a slight shrug of indifference. Even ‘Beetlebum’, the greatest pop song ever written about heroin, seems a little plodding, and ‘Trimm Trabb’ is never really going to raise the pulse-rate. The band are playing well but it all feels a little like we’re waiting for something to happen rather. ‘Colin Zeal’ gets a rare live outing and ‘Coffee & TV’ finally prompts a mass singalong, but it isn’t until ‘Parklife’ and the appearance on stage of Phil Daniels that the band truly bridge the gap and engage the masses in the kind of celebratory terrace chant that brings a gooey smile to every face, the Quadrophenia star mugging and gurning with gusto.

From there on, the band can do no wrong, springing hit after hit, from the gloriously heart-shattering ‘To The End’ to the screaming sweat and slather of ‘Song 2’, before downer anthem ‘This Is A Low’ brings the main set to a close.

The four-song encore is note perfect, beginning with the brash ode to acceptance that is ‘Girls & Boys’, Albarn once again swathed in a flag, this time sporting the rainbow colours of Pride. ‘Tender’ is bruised and beautiful, turning the leafy suburb into a thousands-strong gospel choir as we belt out the only words that matter: love is, indeed, the greatest thing. A quick run through ‘The Narcissist’, lead-single from forthcoming LP, The Ballad Of Darren, and all that’s left is the magnificence of ‘The Universal’ to send us off into the twinkling night, hoarse and grinning.

John Walshe