LEADER OF BLUR PUTS U.S., U.K. IN FOCUS.

Byline: Fred Shuster Daily News Music Writer

Blur's Damon Albarn, one of the best-known pop stars in Europe, has a bone to pick with a recent Vanity Fair profile of swinging London that posits the city as the world's epicenter of culture in the late '90s.

``Tell that to the average Londoner standing at a bus stop in the rain in a torn overcoat,'' Albarn says. ``The whole thing's ridiculous. The clubs and bistros and fashionable bars and parties are open to a very small chosen few.''

Of course, Albarn, who was born in the city's working-class East End, can have it both ways. As the face of Britain's biggest band outside of Oasis, he's at the top of the heap in his hometown, where he is chased by photographers every time he pops out of the Portobello Road home he shares with longtime girlfriend Justine Frischmann of Elastica.

But in America, Blur isn't that well-known, although the quartet has a loyal and vocal fan base, many of whom spend hours on the Internet raving about Albarn's model-good looks. Now on tour in support of the band's just-released fifth album, simply titled ``Blur'' (Virgin), Albarn and company are playing small theaters to mostly sold-out crowds. The group appears Wednesday at the Palace in Hollywood.

``If anything, we've underplayed this tour,'' the 28-year-old Albarn said. ``The entire U.S. tour is selling out as we put the tickets on sale. We could have easily played bigger places, but in a way it's more appropriate to tease the audience this way. This is our seventh American tour. We've built a pretty solid group of fans here. We're playing the places on this tour that we consider our fan centers.''

The history of Blur can be traced back to 1980 when singer-keyboardist Albarn and guitarist-saxophonist Graham Coxon met as students at a comprehensive school in Colchester, Essex, where they both sang in the choir. The pair later met bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree and formed a strange art-punk band called Seymour.

After playing about a dozen shows around London, they renamed the band Blur in 1989. The group started to become big in Europe with 1993's ``Modern Life Is Rubbish,'' followed by 1994's ``Parklife,'' which took the British middle-class as its theme and is considered the opening salvo of the Britpop movement.

The next year's disc, ``The Great Escape,'' spawned a series of Kinks-like chart-toppers, including ``Country House,'' ``The Universal,'' ``Stereotypes'' and ``Charmless Man.''

Last year, a Blur song and an Albarn solo track appeared on the acclaimed soundtrack to the film ``Trainspotting.''

The new album signals a change in direction, Albarn said. Some reviewers have noted the sparse, eerie influence of Portishead and other trip-hoppers.

``Any pressure we felt was self-imposed,'' Albarn said from a tour stop in Philadelphia last weekend. ``We were trying to make sure we didn't do anything familiar. The longtime fans know all our stuff, and a lot of our earlier material is actually like this. We never put many singles out that sounded similar.''

Albarn said he was enjoying visiting a country where he wasn't often noticed.

``It's pleasant not to be chased around by the press,'' he said. ``I'm out of that stage, really. There was a period in my life where I enjoyed being a pop star, but I'm not that enamored with the whole celebrity thing anymore. I can tolerate it, but it doesn't excite me anymore. Initially, it was quite alluring. I was just as prepared as anyone else to discover it for myself. But being a celebrity in Britain, it just gets out of hand. The press is so focused on pop people. You develop this very unreal sense of self-importance.''

Albarn said despite recent reports to the contrary, London is actually less exciting musically than it was five years ago.

``Jungle music has been an important musical force along with so much other great dance music that's come out of Britain,'' he said. ``But really, it's a very static country.''

The recording of the self-titled new album took place in London and Iceland. Albarn said the experience wasn't as difficult as sessions for ``The Great Escape.''

``We worked in a far more low-key manner,'' the singer said. ``On `Great Escape,' we weren't feeling so creative at the time. Our will to make a record was far stronger than our spirit. In situations like that, you tend to get a bit overly worried about things. Everything's blocked up and you can't be as free as you'd like to be.

``So, we locked ourselves away, went to Iceland and got out of everybody's hair for eight months. It was easy, we didn't work too hard and kept civilized hours. It was ludicrous to put ourselves under incredible amounts of pressure.''

The newly relaxed work ethic extends to Albarn's lyrics, which in the past have been worked and reworked until they resembled pop koans.

``This time they really were fairly automatic,'' Albarn said. ``I let it all out. In the past, I've come up with ideas and gone back and reworked them into perfect little pop songs. This time, I went with my first intuition.''

Albarn may be peeved at Vanity Fair's colorful take on London, but he is also pictured in the 25-page section, which claims the city's long-standing ethnic variety has helped spawn an exciting new arts scene.

``I grew up in the East End and lived next to a Pakistani family on one side and a Jamaican family on the other,'' Albarn said. ``All my life, I've felt I lived in a multicultural culture.''

THE FACTS

Who: Blur, with Papas Fritas.

Where: Palace, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Tickets: $16.50.

Information: [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Britpop pioneers Blur, on their seventh American tour, perform Wednesday at the Palace in Hollywood.