Blur have a new album on the way, but it might not be what the reunited Britpoppers’ faithful had in mind.
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Blur is due out on March 26, as NME points out. The Rockabye Baby! series has previously released crib-ready reworkings of songs by the Ramones, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC, among others. A xylophone- and bell-heavy sample is streaming on the series’ website.
Meanwhile, the grown-up Blur performed on Saturday night at Mexico’s Vive Latino festival. Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James, and Dave Rowntree will also be playing at Coachella in April amid a few other 2013 dates, including at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival.
Blur reunited in 2012 for a series of U.K. concert dates that built up to a huge concert at London’s Hyde Park at the closing of the Olympics. That show has been compiled onto a five-disc CD-DVD Parklive package. Blur also released a massive, career-spanning 21 box set. And they debuted their first songs since 2010’s “Fool’s Day,” the elegaic rock ballad “Under the Westway” and art-punk “The Puritan.”
Still, Blur have been characteristically coy about whether a new Blur album that isn’t made up of lullabies will ever be in the cards. So, girls who are boys and/or have baby girls or boys, this compilation might be for you. If only to find out how they turned “Song 2” into sleeping music.
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Blur track list:
1. “Tender”
2. “Song 2”
3. “Coffee & TV”
4. “Girls & Boys”
5. “There’s No Other Way”
6. “Country House”
7. “Beetlebum”
8. “Parklife”
9. “Popscene”
10. “End of a Century”
11. “Sing”
12. “The Universal”
