Review: With Original Lineup, Blur Returns to New York in Punky Form

Blur came on punky for its first New York City concert in 15 years with its original lineup at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Friday.

Damon Albarn, Blur’s singer and lyricist, pumped his fist and flung bottled water on nearby spectators and himself; Graham Coxon cranked up the lead guitar; Dave Rowntree on drums and Alex James on bass hit neatly and hard.

Blur has just released “The Magic Whip,” its first new studio album since 2003 (although the band has reunited for tours since 2009). Tickets were given away for the show, which ran through 11 of the album’s 12 songs followed by encores from the 1990s, when Blur was a standard-bearer for British rock.

The old lineup is now a different band in many ways. In the 1990s, Blur’s default mode was brashly cynical. Britpop, as its music was called, worked out some decidedly mixed feelings about British culture — pride, frustration, provincialism, betrayal, habituation, disenchantment — in songs that drew on particularly British predecessors.

Mr. Albarn’s deliberately unpretty vocals mingled with David Bowie’s baritone drama and John Lennon’s bite, while the music dipped into the British Invasion, glam-rock, music hall and electropop, all with punk hindsight. The lyrics could be cryptic or cutting, holding the kind of accusations that can be made only by someone close who still cares.

“The Magic Whip” has a more grown-up malaise. Its recording began while Blur was stranded in Hong Kong between tour dates, and the album was finished with help from Stephen Street, Blur’s producer during the 1990s. Its lyrics are filled with references to Asia and a deep sense of isolation, dislocation and futility. Most of the songs don’t smirk or lash out; they mull things over or long for contact. The album leans toward ballads, and the music deepens the alienation by layering them with electronic notes and noises. The moody undertow is often closer to Mr. Albarn’s projects outside Blur, like Gorillaz and his solo album “Everyday Robots,” than to Blur’s hits.

Yet onstage, Blur pushed the new songs toward its old guitar-band core. It had backup musicians: singers, a keyboardist, a second drummer. They were there to fill in the textures of the new songs, but they were only a backdrop. Up front, Blur reclaimed the strategic alliance between Mr. Albarn and Mr. Coxon, goading and supporting each other.

Songs with aggressive guitar parts — like “Go Out” and “I Broadcast,” which are as close as the new album gets to the grungy swagger of Blur’s 1997 album and United States breakthrough, “Blur” — were unbridled, while “Ong Ong” served up the kind of singalong chorus Blur brought to arena concerts in 1990s Britain.

More wistful songs, like “Ghost Ship” and “New World Towers,” bared guitar countermelodies that are tucked away on the album. And “Pyongyang” — a dirge sung by a prisoner in North Korea awaiting death — erupted with reverb-laden, feedback-laced guitar. Blur had recalibrated its new songs: less resignation, more spite.

Encores stayed brash: the grunge-meets-Beatles of “Beetlebum,” the pushy, punky “Trouble in the Message Centre” and, finally, the sarcastic blast of “Song 2,” which had the packed club shouting “woo-hoo” and pogoing like a punk crowd. It was nostalgic, but fully engaged.

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