Hear Blur's Uplifting New Song 'Lonesome Street'

Hear Blur's Uplifting New Song 'Lonesome Street':

Fresh off premiering their new album, The Magic Whip, at a small club gig in London, Blur have revealed "Lonesome Street," another track from their highly anticipated reunion LP. The tune, which opens the new record and finds frontman Damon Albarn singing words of assurance like, "If you have nobody left to rely on/I'll hold you in my arms," is the third and final track sent to fans who pre-ordered the album, which is due out April 27th.

When compared to The Magic Whip's previous offerings – first single "Go Out" and "There Are Too Many of Us" – "Lonesome Street" is the track that most resembles the band at their Britpop best, conjuring up the giddiness of The Great Escape and the feeling of Parklife.

Compared to the other Magic Whip songs, "Lonesome Street" is the first on which guitarist Graham Coxon has taken a starring role, making the song and its riff, as well as the guitarist's much-missed background vocals, unmistakably Blur. The Magic Whip is the band's first album with Coxon since 1999's 13, though he did contribute guitar to Think Tank's "Battery in Your Leg."

In another move that shows how Blur are open to revisiting their past, they performed the Parklife cut "Trouble in the Message Center" for the first time in nearly two decades during the encore of their album-premiering gig. The band will stream the show in its entirety via the Beats by Dre YouTube page starting Wednesday, March 25th.

"Graham came to me and said, 'We’ve got something here,' Albarn said in an interview with the BBC's Zane Lowe about hoe the record came together. "I was really busy doing my own thing but they came back and played me what they'd done, and I was like, 'Oh no, this is really good.'" Regarding how the group made the album, he added, "We didn't have much [equipment]; it was like back when we first started recording stuff."

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