Blur- Parklife
Paid- $3.99 + tax
Skulls- 4 1/2
Paid- $3.99 + tax
Skulls- 4 1/2
Parklife, released in 1994, is the third album by the famed British alternative pop-rock band and had all but existed off of my radar until recently when I picked up the 16 track LP for $3.99 ($0.25/song) at Hastings. And yes, lately like many, I'm always hoping to tap into some sort of nostalgia associated with early '90's, hot babysitters, and riding in older brothers Oldsmobile with no air conditioning, melting to Nirvana. But thats not why I got it. I had listened to the first track and single, Girls & Boys, and watched the video about 5 times, loving it more with every play. It begins with a swerving kind of synth and some playful percussion and quickly breaks out into a perpetual trance-like groove. The bass carries the song, which led me to ask, how do you describe something as being bouncier than bouncy? I was dying to have THE album with THAT song; it had to be fantastic. And it was. Parklife plays out like a journey through Britpop paradise, a social commentary on life in England in the 1990's, and a large-enough step forward to cement a band firmly in the epicenter Royal rock history. Each one fully realized, the songs span genres with incredible consistency. David Albarn never rest for too long in one alley, the bass and synth driven Girls & Boys fits right in with the synthpop of the 70's and 80's, title-track Parklife is classically Beatlesque while exploring its on territory, Tracy Jacks is very heavily XTC-influenced, the classic-rocker Jubilee has the drive and smirk of the great Nick Lowe, and the full out punk-rocker Bank Holiday solidifies the claim that this is a defining British album, in that it defined who Britain was and how it had come to be that way. What a steal.