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at a glance...
Hometown: Essex/London, England
Formed: 1988
Personnel:
Damon Albarn -vocals, guitars, keyboards
Graham Coxon -guitars, vocals
Alex James -bass
Dave Rowntree -drums
Related Bands:
Seymour, Graham Coxon, Silver Apples, Elastica, Fat Les
Notes:
In 1989 they were a noisy, unpredictable art-rock outfit saddled with the terrible name Seymour. By 1999 they had become a noisy art-rock outfit using the slightly less terrible name Blur. A lot happened in between. Blur killed baggy, pretended to be mods, birthed Britpop, pretended to be Americans...and released some of the decade's best pop records along the way. Early hit singles "She's So High" and "There's No Other Way" provided an auspicious beginning, but the band almost imploded before 1993's Modern Life is Rubbish gave them a new look and a second life. Parklife pulled them out of the indie ghetto and into the British tabloids, but a foolish, if fun battle with Oasis overshadowed 1996's The Great Escape. It was to be the last of Blur's trilogy of English Life albums, and 1997's "Song 2" made them a surprise favorite in America's football stadia. Go figure.
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Blur
Parklife
Food/EMI, Released 1994
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Parklife still sounds like London in 1994 - busy, adventurous, young, and confident. This album is thrilled to be alive. For all of Damon Albarn's millennial urban angst ("End of a Century," "Trouble in the Message Centre"), the loving detail of his portraits overwhelms the superficial cynicism and despair. The Ibizan holiday rats of "Girls & Boys," Phil Daniels' cockney layabout on the title track, the butyl-sniffing video gamer of "Jubilee"...the depth of these characters renders them lovable in spite of themselves. Albarn abandons the safe outcropping of critical distance - Parklife is a message of good faith to a generation, and an invitation to sing along.
Sing along they did. The bouncy eurodisco of "Girls & Boys" preceded the album and it was a formidable statement, twisting throwaway pop formulas into an enduring classic simply by executing them so well. Irony never made anyone pogo, after all. Likewise, the doomy Francophile anthem "To The End" and the harpsichord melodrama of "Clover Over Dover" are driven by subtly magnificent tunes that steer them clear of the cul-de-sacs of contrivance. And "This Is A Low" will have you sobbing at the shipping report, so mighty is the sway of its arrangement.
Albarn always had a way with a tune, but here the music matches the message so perfectly, so effortlessly, that Parklife hardly could have avoided the public consciousness if it had wanted to. It didn't, of course -- this is a shamelessly pop (and populist) record, and arriving as it did in Britain after three years of shoegazing, grunge, and ambient techno, the boldness of Blur's conceptual pop statement cannot be overestimated. To argue that the record never played - nor could have played - in America is nitpicking. Blur designed Parklife for mass consumption without sacrificing their blessed artfulness, a huge achievement in its own right. We haven't seen the likes of it since.
If you like Blur, check out:
Blur Blur
Blur The Great Escape
Blur Modern Life Is Rubbish
Blur Leisure
Graham Coxon The Sky Is Too High
Blur 13
The Kinks Something Else
The Beatles Revolver
Small Faces Ogden's Nut Gone Flake
The Lilys The 3 Way
-- jf
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