Coachella 2024: Blur's dark set gets a boost from Desert Cahuilla Bird Singers

When it comes to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Damon Albarn is full of surprises.

Albarn appeared in 2022 as a special guest during Billie Eilish and Flume's sets, brought out several special guests in 2023 while performing with Gorillaz, and was backed for a few songs on Saturday by the Desert Cahuilla Bird Singers while performing with Blur.

But like Jon Batiste on the Outdoor Theatre stage, Blur needed all the help the band could get after reports of Taylor Swift being in the wings of the Mojave tent during Bleachers' set.

Blur, who last performed at the festival in 2013, began with a dark keyboard-driven, drony instrumental as surveillance camera-style footage of the band mixed with social media videos of intoxicated people falling down in public and a lengthy terms of service agreement appeared on the video screens during "St. Charles Square," "Popscene" and "Trouble In The Message Centre."

Albarn reminded the crowd they were standing on fields used for polo and didn't know what kind of team the band would be or what country it would represent. He acknowledged a fan who shouted Argentina but said "we're way more obscure than that." Another shouted "Paraguay," Albarn laughed and said "That's my f--king kind of place, man" before delivering a brief history lesson.

"If you don't know where Paraguay is, which is totally understandable, you should Google it because it's a really interesting place. It lost 90% of its men during a certain war," Albarn said.

'We need to learn to get along'

He also told a story before performing the anti-war song "Out Of Time" about having never gone into an American barbershop until recently for a beard trim, when he saw the barber had what he described as an item that said "Make America Hate Commies Again" in the shop.

"No, I know you don't approve of that," Albarn said to a fan shouting at him from below. "But (the barber) gave me the first beautiful experience of my beard trim, and all I'm trying to say is our world is very polarized and we need to learn to get along."

Blur gained more of a crowd as the performance continued through songs such as "Beetlebum," "Goodbye Albert" and "Trimm Trabb," but the band was elevated by the Desert Cahuilla Bird Singers joining in for "Bird Song" and "Death Of A Party."

If anyone looks up footage of Blur performing its 1994 song "Girls & Boys" live at Wembley Stadium in London last year or in Hyde Park in 2012, fans scream the lyrics at a volume eclipsing the band and sing the chorus. During the band's 2013 Coachella set, it was mostly quiet as Albarn stuck the microphone in front of the audience, but this time he wasn't going to let them get away with it. He asked the crowd to sing the chorus again, only louder.

Albarn said before playing "Song 2" he saw a version of the song on TikTok being performed with a vacuum cleaner, which he described as "humbling and inspiring." The song still resonates because that was the song that received the loudest ovation and sing-along during the line "Woo-Hoo."

As the crowd dissipated and Blur closed the set with "Tender," those who stayed behind were treated to the best moment of the set when the Desert Cahuilla Bird Singers returned to the stage and the chorus of "Oh my baby, oh my baby. Oh why, oh my" filled the air by the band, the singers and the crowd.

Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or on Twitter at @bblueskye.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Coachella 2024: Blur gets a boost from Desert Cahuilla Bird Singers