“Tender is the night/ lying by your side”: yes, the night is tender in front of the splendid historic walls of Lucca: the 35,000 mostly forty-year-olds (and surroundings) who flocked here are very pleased as the end credits of their generation band, Blur, roll by. Yes, the appointment with the four from Colchester who forged the so-called Britpop together with the neighbors, friends-enemies Oasis and a handful of other bands has the flavor of a generational rendezvous: immersed in their quarrel-reconciliation vortex, Blur come to our parts once a decade and meet their fans who gradually become teenagers, young adults, fathers of families.
But, like the last time in Milan and Rome in 2013, also here in Lucca this return does not know of stale and even more convenient appointment: Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, voice and guitar, architrave of the band from kids and then often described as dog and cat, here they go shoulder on the shoulder, in an exchange of amorous senses that certifies the fact that this reunion has not been set up to pay the children in the RSET or the Bentley parked in the garage. At Wembley, where they played in two very full evenings just a few days ago, they fulfilled their teenage dreams, but even in Lucca they seem to be having fun: with a lineup entirely designed for the fu teenagers crammed into the walls. Because the songs of the successful latest album The Ballad of Darren are only three (the introspective and very beautiful The Narcissist , for example): the rest is pure revivalism, fresh 90s revivalism.
Yep, all the band’s anthems flow: Beetlebum and Country House, Parklife and Girls & Boys. Albarn proves that he still has an important voice at 55 and an always histrionic attitude: he jumps like a cricket on stage and at one point he even does stagediving, singing End of a Century in the audience. But perhaps we had forgotten how punk Blur were: Coxon’s guitar lashings are in Advert and Song 2. And when annoying technical problems prevent him from singing his forte «Coffee & Tv», he takes his time, joking with Damon. In short, everyone was happy: on stage, in the audience. Because you can choose how to age: badly, denying yourself and what we have been. Well, aware, despite so many vicissitudes, of having marked a season and a generation. Because as they sing in the finale of the choir The Universal: «It really, really, really could happen». What could have happened we don’t know, what happened is in everyone’s eyes (and ears). And the night is tender above Lucca.