Melody Maker London loves Blur. Blur, being mods, love London. I do not love London, I merely live in it. But I do like Blur. I mean, "Girls & Boys" - great single or what? (Especially the Pet Shop Boys disco mix, which the contrary gits refuse to release). More, please! Proper hit record, too: in at Number Five, down only one place, loitered around the Top 10... Look on that, ye Suedes and Primals, and despair. For "Parklife", through, Blur have gone to the dogs. (And the Costa. And the boozer.) Clock 'em on the sleeve, sucking on proley Embassy No 6s, staring at floodlit greyhounds, clutching losing tickets. Inverted Class Envy / "how the uvver arf lives" trip no 29194, here we come. Damon's fantasy Club 18-30 hoolies in "Girls & Boys" remind me of Morrisey's homo-erotic "Rushholme Ruffians" and his whole perverse fascination with the "Ordinary Boys", the people who would, given half a chance, kick his head in. Like Morrisey, Blur are bourgeois indie softies who like a bit of rough. But maybe The Rolling Stones are a better analogy - nice middle-class boys kidding the world they were East End yobs. (Nice try, bless 'em, but they'll always be more Itchycoo Park than Upton Park). Blur, being mods, fetishise style uber alles. So, in fashion terms at least, they're one step ahead of the (NWONW / Adidas) game. See Damon on "TOTP" and "The Word"? Having ditched 1979 seaside Rude Boy, he now exudes pure Summer-Of-'84 soccer casual: Ellesse tracksuits, Lacoste sweaters, fawn cords slit at the ankle, sharpened golf umbrellas...all he needs is a girlfriend with highlights and a "CHOOSE LIFE!" T-shirt. Musically - and this suprises me - Blur remain one step behind. Let us compare: 1) Suede (God, they'll hate this). Who have pretty comprehensively made apples'n'pears gorblimeyisms their territory. What's more, Suede's London is all about ambience, romance, drama. Blur, being mods, are just about detail. 2) Saint Etienne. Two or three of "Parklife"'s 16 tracks are incidental, instrumental bridges (the funfair sound of whirling Wurlitzers), giving the LP and Etiennesque cinematic unity. And as I played forthcoming single, "To The End", Bob Stanley flew past on a broomstick looking for a lawyer. They've even hired Stereolab's Laetitia to add just the right Cracknell coos and sighs. But who's complaining: it's precisely as gorgeous as "Nothing Can Stop Us". Most of "Parklife", you'll not be gobsmaked to hear, sounds like The Kinks in melancholy mode, "Alfie", Madness' dignified dying days, "'Til Death Do Us Part", The Small Faces, "Absolute Beginners", The Jam (or, on "Tracy Jacks", the bloody Vapors), "Quadrophenia" (Phil Daniels even turns up on the Flowered-Uppy title track)... All of which means next to nothing to me. In fact, the combination makes me physically nauseous. There are, as always, moments. "Bank Holiday", very literally "Sunday Sunday" Part II, has some wicked couplets ("The kids are eating Snickers / Because they're so delicious...John is in the fun pub / Drinking lots of lager"). "Clover Over Dover", described in the (really not that revealing) scribbled rehearsal notes as "Theme For Imaginary Film" , is as sexy as someone with cheekbones like Albarn's ought to be. The retro argument, incidentally, doesn't apply. "Nothing is wasted, only reproduced", as the man himself puts it. In this respect, Blur are the perfectly mod-ern Nineties pop group. So we'll continue to laugh encouragingly while Blur, kinda clever-stupid but mostly clever, audaciously reinvent themselves each season. So long as they keep giving us singles like "For Tomorrow" or "Girls & Boys", they deserve to exist. (What happens when they finally catch up with themselves, circa Madchester, 1990, when they were the worst band in the world, I don't want to think about). Yeah, I like Blur, even if I can't quite love them. Maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner.