Blur - Parklife
|
List Price: Our Price: $0.79 You Save: $8.15 (91%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Parklife
Free Music Review: Blur: Working class heros!
Hit: 5 Stars
Awhile ago, I had picked up the Best of Blur to see if it was worth buying. While listening to it, I became inspired. Noticing a large(but not intimidating back catalog), I decided to give some of their actual albums a shot. Seeing as how Parklife was their most critcally acclaimed album, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. While I didn't warm up to it right away, it has nuzzled its way into one of my current favorites.Tight song writing and great lyrical hooks are some of the main draws of this CD. What really helps this CD out is the almost XTC Skylarking-esque orchastration on all the songs. But where to me, XTC's music comes of as Medival folk, Parklife embodies the working class of Britain. With that in mind, Blur proceeds to poke fun in a satirical manner with lyrics that light and amusing, the band comes back with catchy numbers and great varation. To the disco beat of Girls & Boys and London Loves, to the quirk rock sounds of Parklife and Bank Holiday, each song remains fresh. Above all else, this CD features some of the most consistant song writing for an album with 16 tracks.
I still recommend Best Of Blur as an introduction for all the would be Blur fans for a great view of all their work, Parklife is possibly the best place to start. It stands as their best work that I've heard and one of the best Brit-pop CDs I've heard. I have a feeling I'll be listening to this one for awhile.
Free Music Review: Very Chill
Hit: 4 Stars
This is a must have for any Blur fan. Even if you're not a fan but you're interested, this is a great album to hear first.The songs on this album range from mellow to punkish to even disco-like tunes--all in a way that is still noticeably Blur. Musically, the style seems sophisticated for the most part, though, as mentioned before, they do seem to dip in to the more daring, fun jives. Lyrically, Albarn is clever, witty, and overall entertaining. It's a refreshing combination compared to the [stuff] you hear on the radio
Blur is a very fun band to listen to, and I highly recommend this album to anyone.
Free Music Review: Blur's Parklife
Hit: 5 Stars
This ranks among the essential alternative art-pop CDs of the nineties. Pop is really not a fair term altogether, because many of the songs on "Parklife" are not very accessible. One could go on about the hooks, and the song-writing, and the diversity, blah blah blah. The bottem line is that you can never really define what makes great music, yet you know it when you hear it. Blur just has it; it's in the touch and the sound. And even in their slower tunes their exists a drive that is lacking in so many other bands who just don't get it. Blur's respect for the great artists of Britian truly enhances their already unique sound. Quoting the hooks of Bowie, early Pink Floyd, and the Kinks will never hurt your sound. What is so amazing about this band is that if they had never changed their approach after this, they still would have been great. But after "Great Escape" they begin a revamped phase that combines the best of British alternative with American indie rock. "Girls and Boys," End of a Century," "Parklife," "This is a Low," and most every other track are fantastic. It's interesting that young americans truly adore Radiohead(and deservedly so)but have not to the same degree caught on to Blur,who ranks every bit as important among the top of the British bands. Perhaps one of Amazon's reviwers put it best when they said that Blur is better than 90% of what's out there. With this in mind, you really can't go wrong with any of their CDs.Free Music Review: The Beatles Who?
Hit: 5 Stars
Despite the fact that the song "Girls & Boys" would make my top ten list of "Gayest Songs Ever", "Parklife" is a brilliant album. It established "Blur" as a band that is not only capable of creating catchy songs, but is also a band that is made up of musicians that are actually talented. The songs on "Parklife" sound as if they were composed, written part by part. When's the last time you heard an "om-pa-pa" song ("The Debt Collector") on a pop album? Unfortunately, the mega-hyped arrival of "Oasis" in the U.S. overshadowed this great album.Free Music Review: Ever so slightly over-rated but very cool
Hit: 4 Stars
If there's one conclusion to be made after listening to Parklife, it's that Blur are most certainly English, and delight in satirising the English whilst remaining proud of their Englishness themselves. I mean, come on, for a start, the album is named after greyhound racing, and you can't get much more English than that.Next, Albarn's voice is the most blatantly cockney voice since Joe Strummer's early Clash days. Next, 'Tracy Jacks'. I mean, no-one from another country could be called that, and the lyrics certainly couldn't be about a non-English person.
Musically (with the possibly exception of the out of place but possibly best song on the album This Is A Low, which is worryingly mature) it isn't exactly complex, or wonderful, but there are come cool, catchy tunes, not least the ultimate annoyingly catchy song of the decade, Girls and Boys.
However, lyrically, Albarn shines through, with his wry, funny, witty self-satirising lyrics, along with one song that is most certainly not about England, the great 'Magic America'. Parklife does represent a culture, but it does so in a way that isn't as fantastic as the following years' Oasis and Pulp albums. It is slightly over-rated, but it remains probably their best album, with the possible exception of its polar opposite 13.