Time Out: Blur's guitarist does his own thing. World slightly better.
Graham Coxon "The Sky is Too High"
DESPITE BEING THE guitarist in Blur, one of Britain's most popular pop bands, it's no secret that at times Graham Coxon entertains the fantasy of being in an American experimental group like Sonic Youth. Indeed, it was his lo-fi vision that informed much of last year's Blur album, the one that upped their cool quotient again. It featured his first vocal outing, You're So Great, revealing to the world he could hold a tune. A cracked, fragile and occasionally off-key tune but a tune all the same.
One thing was certain about this album: it would be a million miles away from the Groucho Club singalongs of Me, Me, Me and Fat Les favoured by Blur bassist Alex James. However, it transpires that this release, on Coxon's own Transcopic label, may well appeal to people who never would never normally consider the pop sensibilities of the parent band.
With Coxon playing all the instruments, perhaps the closest recent comparison is to Bernard Butler's recent effort. Both guitarists are/were members of groundbreaking Britpop bands, both have musical interests outside the band which brought them to prominence, and both profess an adoration for tragic early-'70s songsmith Nick Drake. He even gets a mention on the electrified I Wish ("I wish I could bring Nick Drake back to life"), a song which also restores the swear word "flipping" to rock vocabulary.
However, where Butler is all studied craftsmanship, Coxon recorded his album in just five days, giving it a refreshing, thrown-together feel. His voice fumbles along in a touching and understated way and on In a Salty Sea and Waiting he even warbles like Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett.
Written while teetotal on tour with Blur last year, the songs are, according to Coxon, "a rough journal of the wanderings of an abstainer's mind undergoing quite heavy stress whilst touring". And with seven of the 11 tracks acoustic, the dominant emotion is melancholy peppered with raucous guitar outbursts of That's All I Wanna Do and Who the Fuck?
Avoiding the self-indulgence trap associated with many an axeman's solo effort, Coxon
has produced a Beautifully affecting and accomplished album to file alongside his heroes.
Anthony Thornton
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