Blur have returned to New York for the first time in sixteen years.
The British icons played Brooklyn's Music Hall in Williamsburg on Friday night, a small 550 seat venue. It was their first appearance in North America since the 2013 Coachella Festival. The show consisted of a main set performance of their new album, The Magic Whip, followed by three songs from their catalog.
The group has said that further dates in North America are a "great question mark." Damon Albarn told Rolling Stone that he's always been "very frustrated with the brick wall that we always seemed to hit". While The Magic Whip will be the band's sixth straight number 1 album in the U.K., they've never placed an album higher than 56 on the U.S. charts.
Albarn has had much greater success in the U.S. His Gorilaz project has hit the top ten twice, his one album with The Good, The Bad and the Queen went to 49 and his solo album, Everyday Robots, peaked at 32.
The set list:
Main Set
Lonesome Street (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
New World Towers (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
Go Out (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
Thought I Was a Spaceman (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
I Broadcast (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
My Terracotta Heart (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
There Are Too Many of Us (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
Ghost Ship (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
Pyongyang (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
Ong Ong (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
Mirrorball (from The Magic Whip, 2015)
Encore
Beetlebum (from Blur, 1997)
Trouble in the Message Centre (from Parklife, 1994)
Song 2 (from Blur, 1997)
