Damon Albarn at the Royal Albert Hall: I’m sorry to say he killed it

You can’t help but want to hate Damon Albarn. While he may not be the most irritating of the Britpop survivors, (as long as fellow Blur-ite Alex James is still droning on about cheese, there’s no competition) he’s a convincing candidate for second place. He spent the 90s as a pop idol, singing chirpy Small Faces rip-offs and gnomic industrial rock. There were some great songs, but most of it sounds dated, lost to a cutesy strain of that most meaningless catchall – quintessential Englishness.

Then around the turn of the century he decided to become a sort of proto-hipster renaissance man, a Jonathan Miller figure for fortysomething men who think it’s OK to go to work on a skateboard. Over the last decade, he’s fronted cartoon hip-hop groups and banged out film soundtracks, experimental African electronica and po-mo operas. By rights, this should all have been just as terrible as it sounds.