Back at it! 1990s favorites Blur surprised fans on Thursday, Feb. 19, when the band announced plans for a big comeback.
The veteran Britpop rockers secretly spent time in the recording studio and will debut a studio album of new music for the first time in 12 years. The announcement was accompanied by the release of the album’s first single, a moody track called “Go Out.”
Back in the original lineup of musicians Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James, and Dave Rowntree, Blur will drop the 12-track album The Magic Whip in April. The foursome recorded the songs over just five days in Hong Kong, they explained in a quick and casual press conference on Thursday.
“It felt like the way we recorded when we first started doing stuff,” Albarn said of the band’s simplistic setup. In recent years, he has been recording with his band Gorillaz, working on side projects, and released a solo album, 2014’s Everyday Robots.
The Grammy-nominated group’s last effort, Think Tank, hit stores in May 2003. The indie rockers — peers and rivals with fellow ’90s Brits Oasis — released six previous albums, seeing their greatest success with their self-titled 1997 record and 1999’s 13.
The Magic Whip will be a reunion of sorts, as guitarist Coxon left the band before the completion of Think Tank and was last featured on 13.
Blur’s brand new album #themagicwhip will be released on Apr 27 and you can pre-order it right now on @amazon and @iTunesMusic
— blur (@blurofficial) February 19, 2015
“I was sitting on the sofa; other people were making music and getting on the radio and I hate sitting there not doing much when other people are making music and being told they’re great,” he said in the press conference. “I thought it would be great to go back — now that it’s fermented a while — and have a look. For want of a better word, there was some jamming; there was some sonic landscaping.”
Take a listen to Blur’s “Go Out” above, and check out the full tracklisting for The Magic Whip below!
1. “Lonesome Street”
2. “New World Towers”
3. “Go Out”
4. “Ice Cream Man”
5. “Thought I Was A Spaceman”
6. “I Broadcast”
7. “My Terracotta Heart”
8. “There Are Too Many Of Us”
9. “Ghost Ship”
10. “Pyongyang”
11. “Ong Ong”
12. “Mirrorball”
