Blur Reunite for First New Song in Six Years
To coincide with Record Store Day, the original Blur lineup reunited to release their first new song in over six years. “Fool’s Day” was available in U.K. record shops as a limited-edition 7″, but to appease their global fan base, the Britpop icons have also offered up the new track as a free download on their official website. “To avoid fans having to illegally obtain an inferior copy of this track from pirate sites, we have made it freely available,” Blur manager Chris Morrison wrote on the band’s site.
As Rolling Stone previously reported, Blur convened in the studio earlier this month to record “Fool’s Day” specifically for Record Store Day. The song is the first to feature all four members of Blur — Albarn, bassist Alex James, drummer Dave Rowntree and guitarist Graham Coxon — since the band’s 2003 album Think Tank. In exchange for your e-mail address, you can download “Fool’s Day” as either an MP3 or a high-quality WAV file. The uncompressed WAV file features the entire version of “Fool’s Day,” complete with Coxon’s minute-long guitar solo, while the MP3 cuts off just before the 2:30 mark.
Musically, “Fool’s Day” revisits the iconic Britpop of Parklife and Blur before the quartet ventured into a more experimental direction with 1999’s melancholic 13 and electronic-oriented Think Tank. It’s unclear whether this track is just a one-off single or the first step in the restart of Blur’s recording career, but “Fool’s Day” is the sound of Blur not missing a beat despite six years out of the studio.