Blur - Parklife

Girls & Boys - 3
Tracy Jacks - 3
End Of A Century - 4
Parklife - 4
Bank Holiday - 4
Badhead - 3
The Debt Collector - 4
Far Out - 4
To The End - 3
London Loves - 3
Trouble In The Message Centre - 3
Clover Over Dover - 3
Magic America - 3
Jubilee - 3
This Is A Low - 3
Lot 105 - 3
Total - 53 stars / 16 tracks = 3.31 stars, normalized to 3.4 stars

After listening to their 1995 album, The Great Escape, I was surprised to learn that I kind of really like Blur. And, much like with The Great Escape, its predecessor, Parklife, has some great tracks but misses more often than I'd like. The Great Escape has hiccups of quality, but Parklife's hiccup lasts the whole second half of the album.

I would be entirely amiss to imply that Act II is a total failure, it just doesn't have the same charm and energy that the first eight tracks do. At first, I felt like "oh yeah, it wasn't just a fluke that I liked these guys," but after "Far Out," I kept waiting for another great track that never came.

At eight tracks, Parklife Part 1 would have made a very decent, and much more solid album, but with these guys, I'm happy to take whatever I can get.