BLUR
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Saturday:
- Qantas Credit Union Arena (formerly Sydney Entertainment Centre), Sydney,
- Tickets:premier.ticketek.com.au
Sunday:
- Splendour in the Grass, North Byron Parklands
- Tickets: splendourinthegrass .com
Blur are finally about to hit Aussie shores - 18 months after they pulled out of a headline slot at the 2014 Big Day Out.
The Britpop legends will play the Splendour in The Grass festival in Byron Bay this weekend and arena sideshows in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
It should just about make up for the massive disappointment of them pulling out of the now defunct festival, just eight weeks before it was due to kick off.
"That experience annoyed a lot of Australian fans, so hopefully we can make amends by coming over and doing some great shows," Blur's drummer Dave Rowntree said.
The reason why the band pulled out of the BDO has remained a mystery, with speculation ranging from arguments with the festival's promoters about the band's placement on the bill, to their appearance fee.
Blur have maintained a dignified silence on the ins and outs behind it all, merely apologising to their fans.
"We didn't want to get into a slanging match with anybody," Rowntree said.
The drummer did say that the experience "left a bad taste in everybody's mouth".
"At the end of the day you have to trust people and you have to hope that that trust is not misplaced.
"But sometimes things do go wrong and I suppose that's the nature of the beast," he said.
However, there's no point dwelling in the past now that the band are about to come back Down Under the same year that they gifted their fans with a new album, The Magic Whip.
Considering it has been 12 years since the group's last record, a new album wasn't really expected.
Frontman Damon Albarn is a music machine, working on another band The Gorillaz, creating solo material and writing operas and musicals, among other things.
Bassist Alex James became a farmer and cheesemaker and lead guitarist Graham Coxon went off (after an acrimonious split with the band) to pursue his painting and his own solo career.
Rowntree ventured into politics, representing the British Labour party in several elections but never won a seat.
As for another Blur album, Rowntree remains confident.
"I think the music we make as a foursome was so special I thought it would be ridiculous for us not to get back together again and do it," he said.
"It always seemed to me that our friendships were stronger than the things that divided us, so I was always reasonably confident it would happen," he said.
He does concede that it happened sooner than he expected it to, and was the result of circumstance.
Blur were in Hong Kong in 2013 when the next concert on their tour, in Taipei, was cancelled.
As Rowntree says, it left them stranded in a country a long way from home with a week to spare.
The only sensible thing to do with that week was to record an album.
"It was fortunate that it turned out that everybody was harbouring the same latent desires," he said.
The result was the well-received The Magic Whip, which reached the No. 1 spot in the album charts in several countries, including Britain, and the top ten nearly everywhere else.
All that's left to do now is take it to the stage, something Aussie fans will be excited about.
The drummer says the band will certainly break out the hits as well - but don't expect any five-hour marathon like the Roskilde festival in Denmark.
But with eight albums of material to choose from, fans shouldn't give up on the chance of an epic set. AAP