Parklife

It's astonishing that Parklife ever became popular. It's so full of rough edges: even the dance-inspired hit single "Girls And Boys" is aggressively dissonant. The chugging beat isn't really danceable, the production is full of squealing, squawking noises, and Albarn sings in an overbearing, tuneless holler. It's an even unlikelier hit single than Underworld's "Born Slippy NUXX." A lot of the album is like this. After showing his versatility on Modern Life Is Rubbish , Graham Coxon came into his own and developed a scraping guitar sound that always sounds slightly off-key, even when the song is bright and good-natured. Check out the riff that leads in "Tracy Jacks," and the odd inversion of that riff at the end. The song has an airy feel, but the guitar is a little heavier than the tone requires. Same with "Trouble In The Message Centre," which affects a Police -ish new-wave sound, but with an overly heavy and distorted lead guitar. Moreover, the album is deliberately loosely structured. The first side has a gratuitous instrumental ("The Debt Collector," a straightforward 3/4 bit on drunken horns) and a completely pointless two-minute sketch ("Far Out") in which bassist Alex James recites the names of various stars. The second side has an even more pointless instrumental ("Lot 105," which sounds like goofy carnival music and really kills the majestic atmosphere left after "This Is A Low") and a couple of songs ("Clover Over Dover" and "Magic America") that are way too cute for their own good. The rhymes in "Clover Over Dover" are actually lazy enough to reuse "clover," "over" and "Dover" in every verse. So, Parklife is not a very accessible album. Or is it? Coxon's guitar may be dissonant, but he still writes brilliant hooks. Furthermore, repeated listening reveals that the songwriting is much more complex and subtle than it first seems. "Badhead" opens with a five-note horn fanfare, which is then woven into the chorus in a peculiar way. Instead of forming the main rhythm of the song (as the lead melody typically might), it sort of accentuates parts of the lyrics in the chorus. The aforementioned "Clover Over Dover" may be silly and precious, but only until you hear the way in which the sparkling, iridescent keyboards combine with the guitar line and the "ah-ah" refrain in the background. The sweet spot in "End Of A Century" is the sighs in between the lyrics in the chorus. Parklife already contains most of the tricks that Damon Albarn relied on throughout his career: a monologue by an actor (Parklife's title track is a precursor to "Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey's Head" by Gorillaz ), a quick punk thrash ("Bank Holiday" is clearly a proto-" Song 2 "), melancholy string-drenched ballads (compare "This Is A Low" and " On Melancholy Hill "), and constant stylistic jumps. Albarn and Coxon are consummate actors on this album -- Coxon can effortlessly switch between hardcore punk ("Bank Holiday"), laddish pub-rock ("Parklife") and gorgeous French-film pop ("To The End"), while Albarn uses these backdrops to spin witty stories criticizing modern life and expressing theatrical sadness. They're so good that they can twist and innovate on the styles they're imitating in the very process of imitating them. To see what brilliant impersonators they are, all you need is "London Loves," which steals Suede 's decadent city-glamour theatrics ("London loves the way people just fall apart" is the best line Brett Anderson never wrote) and improves on them to the point of rendering Suede irrelevant. The sentiment of the song is pure Suede (as is Albarn's falsetto on "London loves" in the chorus), but the music is an electro-guitar grind with a bizarre two-part guitar line, the first part sounding like an over-compressed electric jangle, and the second sounding like some kind of weird finger-picked flourish. Halfway through, there's a break with an "aw[...]" stolen from techno music (Underworld's "Bigmouth" has a break just like this). No other Britpop song sounds anything like this. It is vastly more original than Suede's straightforward Bowie/Smiths kick. Albarn's lyrics are much more pointed and clever than on Modern Life Is Rubbish. "Girls And Boys" is the only song that could ever contend for the title of the British " Smells Like Teen Spirit ." It's just that the bouncy rhythm masks how vicious Albarn's take on hedonistic youth culture really is, with the chorus of "looking for girls who are boys, who like boys to be girls, who do boys like they're girls, who do girls like they're boys," and a short pause before the killer punchline, "always should be someone you really love." But it's not all about venom and social commentary. This may be why I often find myself preferring Parklife to Blur's 1995 followup The Great Escape . The 1995 album is superior in almost every way, with even better and more creative music, but for some reason, it feels less emotionally vulnerable to me, more concerned with witty early- Chekhov -style anecdotes pointing out the alleged boorishness and mediocrity of the middle class. Parklife, despite the purposefully shambolic sequencing and the abundance of questionable detours, has beautiful laments like "End Of A Century," "To The End" (what line is more rueful than "you and I collapsed in love?") and "This Is A Low." Other songs like "Tracy Jacks" are a bit self-important -- you can tell that the writer is very young when he concludes that the main character is "over" once he is "getting past forty" -- but still compassionate. It all adds up to Albarn's first masterpiece. Parklife still sounds surprisingly fresh and vibrant, simply because the composition is so detailed and subtle. No new British band over the past ten years has anything approaching Coxon's skill on the guitar or Albarn's flair for the dramatic. A classic in the best sense.

Awesome music, I got the special edition and it is very Nice, with pictures and interviews about the álbum. Good delivery and the product Quality was totally fine.

[Please keep in mind I am reviewing the 2CD Special Edition.] At the time of this album's original release, Blur weren't faring too well in terms of the music charts and popularity. They needed a breakthrough. The single "Girls and Boys" was a success, finally getting them some much-deserved recognition. The following singles "To The End", "Parklife", and "End of A Century" all broke the top 20 in the UK as well. But this isn't just a singles album. This album went on to be praised by fans and critics alike, and it certainly deserves it. There isn't a bad song on the album, though there are a few peculiar tunes ("The Debt Collector", "Lot 105", and James's "Far Out" come to mind.) All the songs are melodic, and none seem just tossed off. Among the non-singles, standouts include the punky "Bank Holiday", the peaceful "Clover Over Dover", the mellow "Badhead", and the epic penultimate song "This is A Low", though every song is memorable to some degree. Probably the weakest track is "Magic America", but it's still good. And not just the vocal melodies are catchy; this album has some nice basslines from James and a lot of great guitar courtesy of Coxon. The drums don't particularly stand out, but they're in time and fit the songs well, so there's nothing wrong with them either. When you listen to the bonus material, it's clear why most of it wasn't on the original album, but there are still many good songs. Some of my favorites on the bonus disc are "Magpie", featuring a lot of awesome guitar work, "People in Europe", which is a fitting B-side to "Girls and Boys", being pretty disco-ey too, the jazzy instrumental "Beard", and "Threadneedle Street", an overall pretty mellow tune in the same vein as "Clover Over Dover". Coxon's country parody "Red Necks" is hilarious too. The live BBC acoustic versions of "Jubilee" and "Parklife" are nice as well. The only songs on the disc I don't really care for are a 7-minute remix of "Girls and Boys" and "Alex's Song", which might be nice if James's voice weren't extremely pitched up for no good reason. The sound quality of all the songs is exceptional; it's no wonder, as the music was remastered at Abbey Road Studios. Thankfully, the people who worked on the remasters aren't participating in the loudness war. The packaging this version comes in is nice as well. Everything is in a cool little box featuring the cover art. Lifting off the lid reveals the album and bonus disc in a card sleeve, a decent-sized booklet with a lot of liner notes, song credits, pictures, and new interviews with the band members, and some nice pictures of the band and single covers. Overall, this album deserves all the praise it gets and makes a great addition to any music lover's collection - pick it up, you won't regret it.

I've been going through kind of a 90's music revival phase lately to remind me of just how much fun I used to have pre-career and paying real bills and all that. I remember going to clubs in the 90's with my best friend and asking the DJ to play Girls and Boys. We thought we were so hip requesting Blur amidst all the American grunge (which was also great by the way). I also remember the cover with the crazy black dog on it that always kind of made me laugh (still does). Anyway, listening to Blur today I'm surprised at how many influences I hear - Buzzcocks, Blondie (think Atomic), the Beatles, etc. I really smiled rediscovering Blur again. Blur is fun and kind of weird sort of like good electronica mixed with punk and rock. It seemed to me on many tracks there is a big 80's influence as well. Most of the songs are fantastic, although around song 9 there are a few in that area that I did not find as strong or as dynamic as a very strong beginning and end. I don't like to compare bands to each other because I think every band holds something special but I will just say that if someone is a fan of Pulp, Oasis, Garbage, Weezer (thinking of some of the bands of that time) they would most likely enjoy Blur. Blur can also be found on the Trainspotting soundtrack. All in all Parklife gave me back a little piece of the 90's (best days of my life) that I really miss. If you are thinking of starting a 90's collection, I would definitely say purchase Parklife and if you remember going to a club and dancing to Girls and Boys about a thousand times, then you should absolutely add Parklife to your collection.

Excelente produto. Recomendo

Parlophone always make great reissues. Any fan of Blur should get this release for a crisp sound.

Le meilleur album de blur

La historia más conocida y mítica del Britpop, fue la real pelea de talento y egos entre Blur y Oasis, las dos bandas inglesas más sobresalientes y talentosas de mediados a finales de la década de los noventas del siglo pasado. Parklife, el tercer álbum de Blur, fue lanzado con algunos meses de diferencia a Definitely Maybe, el álbum debut de Oasis y ambos discos se consideran obras puntales no solo del britpop, sino del movimiento sociocultural que revivió a la clase obrera de Inglaterra bajo la bandera de la “Cool Brittania”. Parklife es un disco que retrata la melancolía de la juventud clase media británica a través de la visión irónica, sarcástica y mordaz de las contradicciones que existen entre el esforzarse para acceder a mejores niveles de vida y, por otro lado, el estar casi al borde de la pobreza en un estado que virtual congelamiento, donde elegir no es opción cuando esta simplemente significa repetir y vivir la misma vida que tus padres al ritmo de refrescantes tonadas pop encadenadas con ritmos duros y riffs de guitarra electrizantes, consolidando el estilo musical de Blur y que tiene su contraparte en el electrizante, duro y a la vez elegante, disco debut de Oasis, quienes embelesan a la clase obrera inglesa con su imagen dura y rebelde que canta exactamente sobre los mismos tópicos que Blur, pero desde una perspectiva más sucia y roquera. Comparaciones aparte, ambos álbumes son ejemplos perfectos de como el arte puede reflejar la época que le toca vivir y volverse referencia clásica sin siquiera pretender aspirar a ello. Un excelente disco que bien merece un lugar en la colección de ustedes. ¡Óigalo recio!

Das ist ein absolutes Sammlerstück, dass in keiner Blur Kollektion fehlen sollte. Super verarbeitete Platte!