Blur have announced an intimate warm-up show ahead of their performance at this year’s edition of Coachella.
The Britpop icons took to their official social media pages to share a flyer of the intimate show, which is set to take place on Wednesday, April 10 at the Fox Theatre in Pomona, California. The show will take place roughly three days before Damon Albarn and co are due to hit the stage at Coachella on Saturday, April 13.
Opening support for the gig will come from Jockstrap. General ticket sales for the show will commence on Friday, March 12 at 12pm local time. Visit here to purchase tickets.
Blur’s announcement as performers for the Californian music festival came as a surprise as back in late 2023, Albarn was pretty adamant about Blur’s upcoming plans, saying “it is time to wrap up this campaign,” back in December. “It’s too much for me. It was the right thing to do and an immense honour to play these songs again.”
The intimate gig marks one of their first US shows in almost a decade (they last played New York in 2015) and return to Coachella after an 11-year absence. It’s also currently their only date on the live calendar for 2024 after a year of heavy gigging in the UK, Europe, South America and beyond. No further US performances have been announced.
Elsewhere, it was recently revealed that Blur are set to release a new documentary and concert film charting their huge 2023 reunion.
As reported by Screen Daily, UK sales and distribution company Altitude has added the two upcoming titles to its European Film Market (EFM) slate. Both projects will be released in cinemas in the UK and Ireland later this year.
The first film is a feature-length documentary detailing the Britpop band’s latest comeback, which saw Damon Albarn and co. record and release their first album in eight years, ‘The Ballad Of Darren’.
Additionally, Blur played two massive headline shows at Wembley Stadium in London last summer. These historic and emotional dates will be captured in a forthcoming concert film called Blur: Live At Wembley Stadium. Release dates for the two new Blur projects have not yet been announced.
In a five-star review of Blur’s first Wembley Stadium gig last July, NME wrote: “This two-hour performance shows that Blur have soundtracked the audience’s lives with real emotional impact.
“[Alex] James recently called the making of their new album an “utter joy”. It’s clear that fans would say the same about tonight.”
The band’s latest release was 2023’s ‘The Ballad Of Darren’. In a four-star review of the LP, NME shared: “Unlike many of their peers, there has never been a timelessness to a Blur album – that’s a good thing. When you listen to ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ now, you can feel disdain for the culture that surrounded them, or the raw confusion of heartbreak on 1999’s ‘13’; they have a way of transporting you to a precise moment or emotion.”
They continued: “It’s why ‘The Ballad of Darren’ is so memorable and touching: you can feel it, everything, in every line sung or note played. Speaking to NME last week, Rowntree says that when they were recording, “everything we tried, worked”, and that “magic was in the air”. It is keenly felt here; may it never fade away.”
In other news, Albarn recently covered The Smiths‘ ‘Panic’ with his Africa Express collective on stage in Mexico City this past weekend.
The Blur frontman joined the group for the performance in Morelos, Mexico at Bahidorá Festival on Saturday (February 17). Albarn sang and played piano for the high-energy performance, and was joined by Camilo Lara for a lively ska interpretation of The Smiths’ 1986 track.
Elsewhere, Blur will release a special Zoetrope pressing of their seminal LP ‘Parklife’ for this year’s edition of Record Store Day.