Amazon.com essential recording
You'd have to stretch back to 1967 to London's psychedelic underground (a time and a place that Blur is admittedly fond of) to find a band that revels as much in its Britishness. And on its third album, Blur takes 30 years of cool English rock, throws it into an art-punk Cuisinart, and ends up with a masterpiece of timeless hooks and Cockney attitude. Like the Kinks at their satirical best, Blur paints warm and funny portraits of quintessentially English characters ("Tracy Jacks," "Parklife," "The Debt Collector"), delivering them with early Small Faces swagger, wiggy Syd Barrett-via-Julian Cope production, XTC circa "Respectable Street" vocal hooks ("ooh-we-ooh"), and a cynical Buzzcocks detachment. The band members are mods, of course, borrowing fashion tips from the pre-glam David Bowie, tempos from the Jam, and actor Phil Daniels (the star of
Quadrophenia!) for a vocal cameo. "Magic America" is the best bored with the U.S.A. song since the Clash, Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier sings backing vocals, the Pet Shop Boys remixed the single, and the members of Blur love Wire so much that they hired that band's old road manager. But enough namedropping:
Parklife is the album on which Blur proves that it's a force to be reckoned with on its own terms, described by front man Damon Albarn as a nocturnal travelogue of London; the only time the album leaves the Motherland is on its lead track, the unbearably catchy single, "Girls & Boys," which follows randy English youth on holiday to Greece.
--Jim DeRogatis
From Amazon.co.uk
Although Blur had long been recognised as one of the premier bands responsible for the reinvigoration of Britpop in the 1990s, it's 1994's
Parklife that truly provided the template for the entire movement. At a time when Oasis were aping the sounds of their pub-rock heroes on
Definitely Maybe, Blur drew from the legacy of the
Kinks and
Small Faces to create an album that's as English as a rainy Sunday in front of the gas fire.
Parklife is full of songs that, quite frankly, don't make much sense outside of the British Isles, songs that find joy in the mundane, like "Girls & Boys" (a song about working-class holidaymakers in the sun) and "Parklife" (a day in the life of a cheeky, unemployed bench-sitter). Witty, ironic and irreverent,
Parklife remains one of those rare albums that sum up a specific place and time (Britain in the mid-1990s). For that reason alone, it can be considered one of Blur's finest albums. --
Robert Burrow