Send "Graham Coxon " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork. |
 "It was just like college, only it was a nicer guitar and a nicer lunch," Blur bassist Alex James writes at the end of his 2007 memoir. James is describing his first meeting "in a couple of years" with Graham Coxon, the woohooing Britpop survivors' then-estranged guitarist. That passage was yet another reason for dedicated followers of the band to keep betting on a full Blur reunion, now official. It also gives you a pretty good idea what you can expect from Coxon's seventh solo album: same bittersweet bundle of misery, posher palate.Coxon is not normally a guy you turn to for easy cubicle listening. In Blur, he was the punkish pedal-stomper with the noisy American indie-rock collection and skateboarding hobby. After Parklife turned the group into pop idols, Coxon was the one who reacted with Kurt Cobain-ish dismay. As a solo artist, he has alternated between post-punk squall and folkie plaintiveness starting with 1998's extremely lo-fi Sky Is Too High-- like so many of the records he would've heard on John Peel's radio show, it was self-released. Longtime Blur producer Stephen Street has helped steer Coxon toward more broadly accessible power-pop on recent albums, most successfully 2004's Happiness in Magazines, without ever quite going middle of the road....full text |
| Guardian |
| Having made up with Damon Albarn and returned to Blur, guitarist Graham Coxon shows further signs of mellowing on his seventh solo LP, which casts him as a finger-picking folkie in the Nick Drake/John Martyn mould. Sadly, the results are underwhelming. The spare arrangements leave Coxon's reedy, off-key croon cruelly exposed and too often he mistakes self-indulgence for whimsicality, letting the Indiantinged "In the Morning " and funereal dirge "November " long outstay their welcomes. Indeed, he's at his best when reverting to rockier form, as on the muscular, swaggering "Dead Bees "....full text |
| Independent |
| Previous solo outings, Graham Coxon's penchant for lo-fi American indie-rock and a rather solipsistic, self-pitying worldview has somewhat hobbled his ability to develop significantly as an artist. Compared to the rampant diversity displayed by his old band's singer, Coxon's post-Blur output seemed to constitute a series of underlinings of the same basic point. What a welcome relief, then, to encounter the changed priorities of The Spinning Top, on which Coxon finally manages to push beyond his former limitations, ironically by delving back into the tangled underbrush of British folk music, particularly as it was re-imagined during the inventive heyday of the 60s folk boom. Not only does it more cleanly expose the breadth of his guitar skills, with ebullient fingerpicking allied to the kind of modal improvisatory approaches of Davy Graham, Bert Jansch et al; it also provides a more apt home for his vocals, their vulnerable, occasionally wavering tone. Something of the ISB's exploratory musical spirit is also present here, in the way that Arabic and Eastern influences are blended into the native folk modes, whether as the odd, resonant bass-string drone accompanying Coxon's fingerpicking on "Look Into The Light"or the wispy Indian tones and birdsong of the lovely "In The Morning", an eight-minute celebration of bucolic perfection. Elsewhere, droning concertina heralds the chill of "November", "Sorrow's Army" is routed by frisky folk-blues stylings, and "Brave The Storm" is comforted by soft woodwind. Which is not to suggest that the album is entirely "wooden" in tone; alongside the acoustic beds of several songs are bursts of electric guitar which test the "folk-rock" envelope, sometimes to destruction. The delicate acoustic guitar and glockenspiel shell of "If You Want Me", for instance, is cracked open by a flanged fuzz-guitar riff a minute or two into the song, and a woozy backdrop of guitar noise underscores the chorus of "Home", whose hearth-side manner provides folksy security at the album's core. Less appealing is "Caspian Sea", on which Coxon's hesitant voice and understated guitar are assailed by juddering waves of wah-wah guitar and the siren keening of Natasha Marsh. The album, claims Coxon, tracks a man from birth to death, though that narrative is by no means necessary for its enjoyment. Instead, individual songs provide glimpses of discrete human conditions – the loneliness and self-denial of "Feel Alright", the desolate contentment of "Far From Everything", the sunny euphoria of "Perfect Love". Most pleasingly, this world seems so much bigger more fulfilling, than the world he once confined himself to....full text |
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