Graded on a Curve: Blur, Parklife

Celebrating Graham Coxon prematurely of his birthday tomorrow.
—Ed.

Today on the Wayback Machine… we return to the Battle of Britpop! In final week’s nook at The Vinyl District: Northern England standard-bearer and contender for the crown, Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?! In in the present day’s nook: Southern England’s pleasure and glory, Blur’s Parklife! Let the battle start!

I ought to state from the outset that it is a battle involving completely different weight lessons. The heavyweight Mancunians in Oasis opted for the knock out; (What’s the Story) is a sluggish however methodical collection of huge, telegraphed hooks to the pleasure heart of your mind. Blur, however, is a light-weight and a dancer, and Parklife comes at you want a flurry of lightning fast blows to the pondering a part of your cerebral cortex.

While Oasis opted for monolithic, Blur went the eclectic route; stylistically they’re in all places. And they’re in all places for a motive; they’re making a press release on the richness and number of London itself. Samuel Johnson as soon as mentioned, “If you’re uninterested in London, you’re uninterested in life,” and Damon Albarn is clearly not uninterested in London or the multiplicity of genres and influences which have lengthy made it one of many world capitals of rock music.

Unlike Noel Gallagher, who took his cue from Seinfeld and wrote an entire slew of songs about nothing, Blur’s Damon Albarn is a social satirist and particulars man. From the polymorphous perversity of “Girls and Boys” to the carefully noticed particulars of the title monitor to the working class desperation of the very punk “Bank Holiday” to the commercial dehumanization of “Trouble within the Message Centre,” Albarn is worried with what it means to be younger and English.

Albarn informed NME that “Parklife is sort of a loosely linked idea album involving all these completely different tales. It’s the travels of the magical lager-eater, seeing what’s occurring on this planet and commenting on it.” Oasis gave England’s lager louts anthems; Blur gave them a analysis.

You get the cheery (if irony-laden) pop of “Magic America,” the glam-bam anatomization of a feckless younger lout that’s “Jubilee” (which jogs my memory of each classic Mott the Hoople AND some horrible pop tune I can’t fairly put my finger on), and the machine-tooled funky and really Berlin Bowie “London Loves,” which units out to show that London is one very fickle lover certainly. (Sample lyric: “London loves the best way folks simply crumble/London loves the best way you don’t stand an opportunity.”)

If there’s one factor Parklife isn’t it’s sunnily optimistic; simply hearken to the romantic despair of the very Francophile and symphonic “To the End,” wherein Albarn (who’s joined by Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier and a few nice guitar wank) sings, “What occurred to us?/Soon it is going to be gone perpetually/Infatuated solely by ourselves/And neither of us can assume straight any extra.”

Albarn acknowledged the affect of Martin Amis’ dystopian novel London Fields, and the affect is there, though his bleakness pales considerably compared to Amis’. The mock anthemic “End of the Century” (which jogs my memory of Squeeze) could take care of the cheapening of intercourse but it surely’s G-rated in comparison with Amis’ explorations of the identical theme, and it doesn’t come near Jarvis Cocker’s pornographically mechanistic examination of bodily love on the Pulp traditional “This Is Hardcore.” (Or another variety of Pulp songs for that matter.)

“Badhead” is one more instance of romantic pessimism, but it surely’s a stunning quantity and sufficient to make you swoon. And Albarn’s pessimism provides strategy to swaggering (if ironic) pleasure on the yob anthemic title reduce; due to the gleefully Cockney narration of British actor Phil Daniels, “Parklife” is a staggering victory and as iconically “English” as something written by Ray Davies. And the LP consists of a few very off-kilter throwaways, together with the very psychedelic “Far Out” and the bizarro waltz “The Debt Collector.”

Declaring a winner in The Battle of Britpop is not possible, after all, for regardless of the media-driven hype surrounding the competitors between the 2 bands they may as effectively have been preventing in separate rings. What actually mattered was England’s pleasure in a swelling renaissance in English rock music. Everybody was speaking Cool Britannia and what higher exemplified Cool Britannia than bands like Oasis and Blur?

For that motive I declare a draw. That mentioned, ought to both band want to toss me a load of pound notes, I’ll be glad to throw the child.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
A

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