Blur Works Out the Kinks in Real Time at Pre-Coachella Warm-Up Show: Concert Review

Three days ahead of their prime-slot appearance at Coachella, Blur put on a packed preview show at the Fox Theater in Pomona, Calif., a half-hour east of Los Angeles. These Coachella warm-up shows serve serval purposes: They help the artist work out the kinks in their setlist — Blur toured extensively last year, including a career-spanning show at London’s 90,000-capacity Wembley Stadium, but most recently performed in South America in November — and they provide fans with a rare chance to see artists perform at smaller-than-usual venues. Last time the group played in the Los Angeles area, it was at the Hollywood Bowl, almost 10 times the size of the 2,000-cap Fox. And for this one, the audience got a show that was nearly double the length of their allotted hour at Coachella.

The anticipation was palpable from the multigenerational diehard audience, which ranged from fans who’d seen the band on its first North American tour in 1991 to first-timers. However, the group kicked off the show with “St. Charles Square” from their latest album, “The Ballad of Darren” — which is not exactly a party-starter. However, that quickly turned around when vocalist Damon Albarn throwing full red solo cups into the crowd while shouting verses from the early-career favorite, “Popscene.” The sound was initially distorted and muddy — a situation that wasn’t helped when Albarn pulled out his trusty megaphone for “Trouble in the Message Center” — but the band rode through it, riding the punky energy of many of the songs from the first half of the set. Still, the momentum was a bit uneven and the crowd was hungry for the hits.

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Albarn — now 56, bearded and bespectacled — remains a natural frontman, although on this night he wore a suit so oversized that it almost recalled David Byrne’s signature ensemble from the “Stop Making Sense” concert film. Around halfway through the set, the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Bird Singers joined the group onstage for “Bird Song.” The indigenous tribe once lived on the land where the Coachella festival is held (and the singers presumably will accompany the band at the festival). Eight men and six women flanked the stage, the men with maracas and microphones, the women in traditional dress dancing and swaying to “Death of a Party.” While visually impactful, the murky sound rendered them difficult to hear until their chanting that closed the song.

The energy picked up considerably for the second half of the set: When the band switched gears into the 1999 favorite “Coffee & TV,” sung by guitarist Graham Coxon, the concert had a rush that carried through to the end. The screams at the first notes of “Parklife” were deafening; Albarn restarted the song, bringing a fan onstage for Phil Daniels’ spoken-word part of the song. (By some accounts, this same fan was charged with that responsibility at Blur’s 2015 Madison Square Garden show — whether or not that’s true, she nailed it.) With the energy at a peak, Albarn went into the crowd for “Girls and Boys,” which led to pogoing (where possible) for “Advert.”

Back onstage, Albarn sat down to recount a rambling anecdote about one of the lawsuits against the band’s biggest hit, 1997’s “Song 2,” concluding by saying, “It’s the only song anyone cares about.” Then he said, “I know a lot of you are quite elderly but let’s jump!” and the band tore into the song. After that surge, the group slowed down with a moving version of “This is a Low,” closing out the main set.

The emotional tone continued when the encore began with “Sing,” which soundtracks some of the most desperate scenes in the film “Trainspotting.” The semi-rehearsal nature of the gig continued as the group went into “Fool’s Day,” which they’d never played onstage before — they stopped and restarted it, working out the kinks in real time.

The encore moved into its final segment when the singers joined the group for the choral singalongs on “Tender,” and the band closed out the night with a one-two punch of “The Narcissist” and their 1995 hit “The Universal.”

Blur’s performance at Coachella this weekend comes with a certain amount of irony: Despite a couple of big alternative radio hits with “Song 2” and “Girls and Boys,” they never quite cracked America in the 1990s — and yet there they are, nearly 30 years later, near the top of the bill at the country’s biggest music festival.

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Reinaldo Massengill

Update: 2024-08-14

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