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


Blur played a nearly two-hour warm-up set in California on Wednesday night before their high-profile sets at the Coachella festival this weekend.

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. 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. 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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