The Feeling That We Thought We'd Never Lose:Blur @ Hammersmith Apollo.

"We have lost the feeling that we thought we'd never lose. Now where are we going?" - Barbaric, Blur

I hear you, Damon. You're a few months older than me (and, according to the Internet, £35,000,000 richer than me) but, like me, you can't escape getting old (the one way you can escape it is inadvisable) but, hopefully like me, you're wearing it well. In fact, Damon Albarn and the rest of Blur are wearing it incredibly well. They have their cake and they're eating it. They're reflecting back on their younger lives while at the same time remaining hugely successful pop stars/rock musicians.

A few weeks back, they headlined Wembley Stadium. I didn't go. I didn't want to go. For the same reasons I didn't go to see Pulp at Finsbury Park. It cost far too much money and I don't want my live music experience to be full of 'heritage' acts. Though my next gig, next Friday, is Primal Scream and The Jesus And Mary Chain at Crystal Palace Park so I'm nothing if not a complete fucking hypocrite.

When Pam told me she'd managed to procure two tickets to see Blur at Hammersmith Apollo (a treasure of an Art Deco venue) doing a livestream of their new album The Ballad Of Darren I must admit I thought twice. When she, incredibly generously, told me I could have the second ticket for a mere tenner (less than it would have cost to watch the livestream on my computer) I both bit her hand off and insisted that she at least let me buy her some south Indian veggie food in Sagar beforehand.

Thankfully, she accepted and so it was that last night we found ourselves in an absolutely rammed Hammersmith Apollo clutching £6.90 pints of Asahi and Meantime IPA (the barman apologised for giving the impression he'd wrongfully assumed the proper beer was for the man, no - the man likes fizzy Japanese lager) and wondering if we'd get just the new album (only about forty minutes long) or if the band would chuck in a few hits, or throw a few bones out to us dinosaurs at the back, as a kind of encore.

It didn't quite work out that way but it was still a great gig and a great night out. The album's opener The Ballad was probably the most disappointing song of the night. It's the one song on the album that sounds better on record than live and my main takeaway from the performance of it was that cheese fondling posh boy bassist Alex James played the song while lying prone on a leather sofa.

While wearing shorts. I think it's the only time I've seen somebody simultaneously channel the spirits of both Jacob Rees-Mogg and AC/DC's Angus Young. Things got properly moving with St Charles Square. It's the most instant, and insistent, track on The Ballad Of Darren and many have compared it to Bowie in his imperial phase. But, for me, even being performed at the venue formerly known as Hammersmith Odeon (a venue steeped in Bowie folklore) I didn't really get that. Angular and taut, it sounded more to me like Blur had been overdosing on their Pavement and Sebadoh records again.

The opening line, "I fucked up", is, presumably, intended to showcase Albarn's new found sense of reflection but, in truth, Blur have always had songs like this. Two of my favourite Blur songs, Blue Jeans and Badhead - neither (sadly) played at Hammersmith, are seeped in a deep sense of yearning. As I remarked to Pam between songs, Blur work better for me when they lean into their pop instincts rather than try to be out and out rockers. And I can leave the "oi oi" stuff completely. Got plenty of that after the gig when we had lasties in The Swan and an impromptu singalong of Parklife broke out.

St Charles Square may be the most instant song on The Ballad Of Darren but for me the standout track is Barbaric. Musically jaunty yet lyrically pondering trauma, the "pyre of abdication", "empty groves", and "winter darkness". It excavates the complex ruins of a failed, or failing, relationship but it could equally refer to the band's own complicated dynamics. Famously, members have fallen out in the past and I often wonder how drummer Dave Rowntree's Labour politics rub up against Alex James hosting Tory wankers like David Cameron at his 'boutique' festivals.

Equally, Barbaric works as a paean to ageing, to growing old. I chose to read it this way. Of late, I've become more cynical about gigs and the gig going experience. The demographic now is for older, wealthier people to go to gigs (I'm at least one of those things but I'm certainly not the other) and this pricing younger people out of the gig going experience is, for me, not great. That's why most of the big gigs this summer have been acts like Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Billy Joel, Guns'n'Roses, Neil Young, Pulp, and Blur. Even Arctic Monkeys would have been considered absolute dinosaurs when I came of gig going age in the eighties.

I guess rock, like Blur and like me, got old, its hair turned grey, it put on weight, and it started to wear sensible shoes. That's not, in itself, a criticism as much as its an observation but it feels sad that young people today won't have the life changing experiences of live music that me and my peer group were lucky enough to have. Memes are fun but they don't send a chill down your back like a great song.

After Barbaric, The Ballad Of Darren (played, of course, in strict order last night) takes a melancholy turn. Albarn spends a fair part of the gig sat behind his piano. Russian Strings and The Everglades (For Leonard) are pure ballad territory. They're yet to reach the level of a track like To The End but that doesn't seem to bother the devoted Blur fans. Many of them wave their arms in the air and sing along to every word of album tracks only released five days ago.

Devotion! Possibly the best received song of the night (bar one, the final song of the encore) was The Narcissist. It was the first single from The Ballad Of Darren so people have had a bit longer to get used to it but I don't think that's the reason why. It's just a classic Blur tune. Albarn singing "I'm a shine a light in your eye", guitarist Graham Coxon (Pam's favourite - that's why there's a photo of him and none of Damon Albarn) providing gentle backing vocals. In what seems to be a running theme to The Ballad Of Darren it seems to be about a disintegrating relationship and Albarn pondering the mistakes he's made. Luckily for him, he's a hugely successful pop star so he gets to do this on albums and at venues like Wembley Stradium and Hammersmith Apollo rather than the Forest Hill Wetherspoons.

The final few songs on the album are all of a kind. The super friendly audience, me and Pam included, more inclined to sway than jump up and down. Goodbye Albert could hardly be further away from a track like Song 2 if it tried, Far Away Island much the same, and Avalon a bit livelier (as an aside if you're going to call a song Avalon you're going to find me comparing you, unfavourably, to Roxy Music who, for me, OWN that title). Album closer The Heights, a graceful piece about "running out of time" and "something so momentary you can only be it", ends the set, and the livestream, with more of a whisper than a scream and that seems wholly appropriate for this late period, almost grown up, Blur. Even if, admittedly from some distance back, they all still look fiendishly youthful.

At the end of the set, Albarn said a few words and hinted, with a cheeky smile, they'd be back on if we were nice. An encore was confirmed and we wondered if it'd be hits. I kind of expected hits but hoped for a few deeper cuts. But not as deep as the ones we were given. Pyongyang (a track from 2015's The Magic Whip), Clover Over Dover (from Parklife, one I actually knew), Mr Briggs from Leisure, All Your Life from 1997's self titled album, and Theme From An Imaginary Film which was an extra track on a 2012 reissue of Parklife.

As Pam went down the front to take some snaps and ogle Graham Coxon, I used the opportunity to pop to the toilet (I'd gone five pints without a piss which is almost certainly some kind of record) and when I came out I heard an enormous cheer. Blur had decided to end the night with the anthemic crowd pleaser The Univseral and people were going fucking nuts for it. It was a nice note to end the gig on and it made me realise that Blur hadn't actually lost that feeling that they thought they'd never lose - and nor had I. Not just yet. Still some life left in the old dog.

Thanks to Pam for (some of) the photos, for sorting the tickets, and, most of all, for being (as always) absolutely brilliant company at Sagar, at the gig, and in the pub afterwards. By the way, did I mention I walked all the way to Hammersmith (for the first time ever)? It took about four hours and I saw a woman rescuing an injured seagull in Vauxhall.