"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.
The Spinning Top crashes into the median, and it barely budges for almost 70 trudging minutes. Blur are doing what every once-profitable band does these days-- hi, Led Zeppelin!-- and getting back together. Coxon is doing what so many other formerly fun musicians end up doing once they've exhausted their Satan-bestowed allotment of decent melodies and lyrics: Yes, it's some kind of concept album, apparently telling the story of a man's life from birth to death, though you wouldn't necessarily know it. Street produces again, and Robyn Hitchcock is among the guests, but even they can't make up for repetitive, one-dimensional songs-- mostly sleepy folk, occasionally fuzzy psych. If the sound quality is more consistent than in Coxon's rough early work, that just means when he stretches threadbare ideas past the breaking point, he'll be less likely to wake you.
One thing intact: Coxon's guitar-playing. If his nuanced and head-smackingly emotive fretwork with Blur hasn't already convinced you he's among his generation's great guitarists, the sinuous finger-picking on otherwise fairly forgettable first single "Sorrow's Army" should send you back to "This Is a Low", "Sing", or "Bugman" with fresh ears. Coxon recently told Uncut he's a big fan of English folk guitar gods Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, and Martin Carthy, and he's certainly playing in their style here. On "Perfect Love", Coxon's folk-filigreed acoustic figure joins various Indian instruments to back double-tracked doggerel lyrics vaguely reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee". "Tripping Over" is an interminable lullaby, but that electric guitar is sure purdy for the last minute or two.
Listeners who've heard only Coxon's last couple of rockers, including 2006's Love Travels at Illegal Speeds, might not've been aware of his folkie streak, but it's been almost as much of an open secret as the fact Blur were eventually gonna reunite. "I wish I could bring Nick Drake back to life," Coxon sang on his first non-Blur single, "I Wish". At least back then he had enough faith in his own lo-fi vision not actually to bite the late English folkie-- he left that to Beck. It's hard to imagine the Coxon of a decade ago singing phrases like "baybay" over rootsy verses in between ornamented choruses that get all Bryter Layter about the rain (except in jest, a la Blur B-side "Rednecks"). Likewise, opener "Look Into the Light" is nice enough, emphasizing the guitar's droning harmonics, but I can't decide if I just like it because the melody reminds me of Drake's "Cello Song". Joined by upright bass and piano on tracks like "Feel Alright", which is as bland as its title, The Spinning Top comes closer to Van Morrison, specifically Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl. In that case, the slow-motion classical guitar licks on "Far From Everything" are "Beside You" all by its lonesome.
Coxon's main Blur songs, "You're So Great" and "Coffee & TV", could go as long as six minutes without a single wasted note. The Spinning Top keeps spinning its wheels. Second single "In the Morning" sounds like the Beatles' "Blackbird" if it had gone on for eight minutes and if Paul had let George arrange-- not just because Coxon mentions a blackbird, either. "If a diamond hangs in every tree and a life is lost for every leaf can a bird still sing?" he asks. Beats me. Even when the Blur guitarist reminds us that he knows where Syd Barrett lives, as on "Caspian Sea", it's not much more fun than bashing your head against the wall repeating geographical terms until every now and then you see stars. "It's oh so serious/ It's oh so lame," Coxon repeats throughout "If You Want Me", occasionally breaking into Pixies-ish distortion-- serious or not, it is kind of lame.
Blur couldn't really be Blur without Coxon. His guitar helps make Modern Life Is Rubbish modern, keeps 13 from collapsing under its own Donald Duck noises, and steals the show during its one appearance on Think Tank. No Blur without him, either. But it's Damon Albarn who has had the band's most successful solo career, outselling Blur with Gorillaz and going on to even more artistically impressive work with the Good, the Bad & the Queen and then Monkey. James has been writing a weekly newspaper column; drummer Dave Rowntree went into politics. It's probably no coincidence that the song here most worthy of Coxon's past work is called "Humble Man". As James's memoir puts it, Coxon is "brilliantly artistic, but vulnerable." He's still my favorite Blur.
