Artist bio

See also: Gorillaz, Graham Coxon

In England and Japan, Blur was a paragon of '90s pop music, one of the "big three" (alongside Oasis and Suede) that launched the new wave of Britpop in the early part of that decade. In America, they're largely known as a one-hit wonder for the written-in-two-minutes Pixies ripoff "Song 2". Natch.

The group's four-pronged musical attack was Beatlesque in makeup as well as in sonic temperament: drummer Dave Rowntree, the eldest of the group, was an accomplished drummer who came of age in assorted punk bands; bassist Alex James was a dreamer with a sharply honed predilection for making candy pop. Guitarist Graham Coxon was the group's heart, a technically dextrous musician with an ear for dissonance and an ability to rein in the bombast favoured by singer/songwriter Damon Albarn, the cheeky frontman able to churn out classic pop melodies and fit his malleable voice into a number of widely varying outfits.

Blur matured over its first two albums into a respectable britpop outfit informed by early Who, the Kinks, the Beatles, etc. but really exploded with third effort Parklife, which boiled down the British character sketches and modern life ruminations into a heady brew that topped the U.K. charts for quite a while.

Two albums later, Coxon's infatuation with American indie rock like Sonic Youth and Pavement won the day, as the group's fifth, self-titled album took a more underground bent. The direction was a neccessary one, and kept Blur relevant into the latter half of the '90s. Follow-up 13 was even more 'out-there', a swampy melange on which you can almost hear the group members pulling the sound in different directions.

With Coxon getting the boot in 2002 (just as his solo career was blossoming), who knows where Blur will head next, but the group has made a significant imprint on the pop canon, including about a handful of all-time classic tunes. Which will of course, differ depending on who you talk to.

Albums by this artist

Think Tank (2004)

'Music Is My Radar' (2001)

13 (1999)

Blur (1997)

The Great Escape (1995)

Parklife (1994)

Modern Life Is Rubbish (Recommended) (1993)

Leisure (1991)

Concerts

March 16, 2003
Bowery Ballroom, New York

Blur

Parklife

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» TROY CARPENTER | CO-DIRECTOR

Blur Parklife Food/Capitol, 1994 RiYL: Squeeze, The Kinks, Supergrass, XTC

Parklife is the centrepiece of Blur's "English Life" Trilogy, a youthful pop brew of bombast and Britishness. Though it received minimal airplay in America, the album went multi-platinum in its home country, filling up the heads of countless countrymen with the inventive and succulent melodies of Albarn and co.

The songs are more to-the-point than previous Blur. Though all band members show improvement at playing their instruments, they chose to parlay their skills into cutting a path to the perfect 3-minute pop song. Augmented by a host of various orchestral instruments, the band navigates Albarn's ultra-catchy songs in a variety of styles. Opening track "Girls and Boys" is a four-on-the-floor club hit with Graham Coxon tossing skewed bits of guitar around Alex James' dancing bassline.

Directly following is "Tracy Jacks," an English character sketch in the vein of Modern Life Is Rubbish's "Colin Zeal." "Tracy Jacks works in simple service / it's steady employment / He's a golfing fanatic / but his putt is erratic," Albarn croons over the upbeat hook. "End of A Century" introduces a couple who, not unlike the denizens of Modern Life's "For Tomorrow," are trying to come to terms with getting old and being boring. Nearing the millenium, the dullards surmise, "is nothing special." The song's musical textures and catchy chorus, however, don't echo the characters' sentiment as much as illustrate it.

Blur's most audacious attempt at ultimate pop bombast comes with "To The End." With its lightly pumping bass groove, French backup singing and Albarn's shamelessly sentimental lead ("Well you and I / collapsed in love / and it looks like we might have made it / yes, it looks like we've made it to the end"), the tune recalls classic popsters like Burt Bacharach, and there's nary a touch of irony.

"Clover Over Dover" paints a vivid portrait of an afternoon at the southernmost point of England. Graham's guitar line acts as the brush, splashing aural greens, whites and blues over Albarn's harpsichord and moping lyric: "I want to roll in the clover / with you over and over / on the white cliffs of Dover / and then I let you push me over"

"This Is A Low" climaxes the album with the most compelling song on Blur's first three records. Easing in with backwards tape hiccups, the minor-key epic is less pompous and more honest than most of Parklife. After three verses, Coxon's wrenching, intertwined guitar solos take over the listener's focus and redeposit it into a stripped-down version of the song's main hook, before closing with a rousing reprise.

Parklife catapulted Blur to superstardom (at least on their home turf) and it still retains much of its vigor. An accomplished third effort, the album is crucial to understanding the creative evolution of Blur, and it stands as a benchmark on the landscape of '90s Britpop.

TROY CARPENTER | Troy Carpenter founded NATN from a Chicago apartment during the ambitious winter of 1998 with co-conspirators Ben French and Jonathan Cohen. After a five-year stint in New York, he and wife Lourdes have recently relocated to Indianapolis, where he spends days listening to music and nights in the kitchen at Elements restaurant. Musical heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Super Furry Animals. What else makes life worth living: Sushi, Phucty, runs in the park, and the Atlanta Braves.