Under the Westway

It's great to hear new material from Blur. Under The Westway is a lovely, cascading, gently epic ballad which could have been written/released during the Parklife/Great Escape-era. Damon's vocals are fragile, mournful and emotional. The Puritan, on the other hand, is a higher-tempo, electronic-laden, jaunty number which has more in common with 13-era Blur. Although it's good, Under The Westway is definitely the stronger of the two. On the CD single, there are instrumental versions of both songs, as well as a worthy acoustic version of Under The Westway.

For Blur completists, it's essential. Even if you're not a completist, it's a strong single and well worth owning if you're a fan. It would be nice if this studio work led to an album... but it doesn't look likely. In the meantime, I'll take what I can get and enjoy this single along with my new box set. There's something very special about the four of them together.

What a truly lovely song this is. A real love song to London from Damon. If this is their last (and I hope to God it's not) then they will have gone out on a high.

Damon's vocals are beautiful, plaintive and emotional. I could listen to this over and over - a good sign!!

Earlier this year, at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon of Blur were performing a short acoustic set as part of a charity show. They played 3 songs, of which the real surprise of the night was the unveiling of Under The Westway, the first new Blur song since the Record Store Day single Fool's Day a few years ago. Much excitement ensued and the performance was all over youtube from various cameraphones around the venue - would there, at long last, be a new Blur album?

No.

But a plethora of Blur releases have hit the shelves, re-releases of all the albums, the mega box set Blur 21: The Box [Bonus Three DVD's and One 7" LP Record] that contains nearly every Blur song ever released, a live recording of the summer Hyde Park concert, and this single.

Under The Westway is the headline track, and is a delicate piano led ballad, another in the Blur canon to reference London's Westway. It's a strong song and grows on repeat listens. It feels a grown up song - a world away from the Blur that threw out anthemic choruses, but none the worse for it.

And the flipside is The Puritan. This has nanana bits in for singalong purposes, and is more up tempo and electric, there's a lot going on behind the vocals to the extent it becomes a bit of a skittish wall of sound. It's fun, but Under The Westway is probably the song you'll return to more often.

Also on the CD single is an acoustic rendition of Under The Westway, which goes back to that original Shepherds Bush performance and mainly shows that adding extra instrumentation and bells (but not whistles) in this case really helps make the track, and instrumental versions of Under The Westway and The Puritan which are largely filler unless you have a karaoke urge for one of these tracks.

So two new Blur songs, that can only be good thing. But worth buying the CD single? Only if you like your music in physical form. If not, the MP3 release will do just fine, the extra tracks really are completists only fare.