![]() You can't help but be impressed by Albarn's apparently limitless powers of persuasion, given that he's also somehow managed to get Lou Reed to add his ornery tones to a jaunty piano-plonking bit of whimsy called Some Kind of Nature. Furthermore, it allows Albarn to further indulge in his hugely impressive post-Blur business of corralling a disparate roll-call of musicians, among them Bobby Womack, the Clash's Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music, the latter playing something inspired by Prokoviev that, alas, gives White Flag a distinct resemblance to Greg Lake's deathless 1975 smash I Believe in Father Christmas. Instead of a new Blur record, his latest release is a concept album that references both the cosmic disco of Giorgio Moroder and a 14th-century guide to contemplative prayer written in the mystical tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Whatever the reason, it caused Damon Albarn to burst into tears, but it wasn't enough to convince him to make another Blur album. Perhaps what the audience at Glastonbury were doing, at least in part, as they kept singing Tender after the band stopped playing, was apologising on behalf of the British public: "Yeah, sorry about that business in 1996 – you have to admit, though, you were a bit annoying, what with Keith Allen and Charmless Man. If you favoured Oasis during the Battle of Britpop, it's also hard not to suffer a pang of regret: you feel a bit stupid, like an early-70s record buyer who somehow came to conclusion that Showaddywaddy were better than Roxy Music. ![]() Confronted with footage of the band in their 90s pomp, it's hard not to feel the way Michael Palin described feeling upon encountering the young Peter Cook: you do rather boggle at the sheer unfairness of anyone being that talented and that handsome. T he Blur documentary No Distance Left to Run is a film that elicits a complex series of emotions from the viewer. ![]()
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