Parlophone-Warner Bros

The thing I have always loved most about Blur is their ability to have each album they’ve created seem so distinctive from the one before it without losing an ounce of their own sonic individuality in the process.

We’re talking about the acclaimed British outfit’s classic lineup of Damon Albarn, Dave Rowntree, Alex James and returning guitar hero Graham Coxon here, whose six LP run in the 1990s was arguably the most consistent succession of classic albums from an English group since The Smiths.

And after spending the majority of the 2010s teasing fans with rumours and innuendo about the existence of new material in the wake of the band’s hotly celebrated reunion in July of 2009, Blur surprised their legions of fans with news of the existence of The Magic Whip, the eighth proper studio full-length from the quartet.

Produced by the one and only Stephen Street who, coincidentally helmed Mozzer and crew’s final studio LP Strangeways, Here We Come, in conjunction with Coxon and Albarn, The Magic Whip finds the boys seemingly taking cues from the last 15 years of their singer’s maverick solo career. Particularly his fascination with Far East music and culture, which imbues the crux of these 12 new songs, not to mention their surroundings while making the album: Hong Kong, where the band was stranded for five days after the festival in Japan they were scheduled to play in May of 2013 was cancelled. The Gorillaz vibe is quite palpable across the languid grooves of “New World Towers” and the heady funk of “Go Out”, where you almost expect Booty Brown to come out of nowhere and tear it up on the mic like he did on Demon Days.

Yet what makes The Magic Whip so eventful, however, is the reunion of Albarn and Coxon, the Glimmer Twins of Britpop who were the driving force behind the way by which Blur soundly trounced Oasis in that NME-fueled feud between the two acts in the 90s. The spaced-out elegance in the melodies of tracks like “Thought I Was A Spaceman” and grand closing number “Mirrorball” confirms the hypotheses of most Blur fans who always wondered what Think Tank could have been like with old Graham aboard.

The Magic Whip is right up there with Parklife, Blur and 13 when it comes to talking about this band at the peak of their game. It would be great if they could now go back to the steadiness of their output in the John Major days, because there’s no where to go from here but up.