Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 21/10/2002
Label: Transcopic

The most revealing thing about Blur has always been the side-projects. Strangely anonymous as a four-piece, it's only when striking-out solo that their true personalities have shone through. Damon the fame-chasing deconstructionist of Gorillaz or wide-eyed pupil of Mali, Alex the champagne-quaffing 'It Boy' of Fat Les, Dave the quiet pilot and Graham the lo-fi indie lost boy. Through more image changes than Beckham's hair, it's a wonder the cracks didn't come sooner than the guitarist's departure last month.

Coxon always seemed the least at ease with the fame game. One of the 90s most underrated guitarists, he reluctantly played the likes of 'Parklife', while seeming happiest among the crowd at a Pavement or Fugazi gig. When Blur went "woo-hoooooo" American on '13', it seemed he had wrested Damon's mockney hand from the wheel for good. Now, five years later, Coxon says he no longer regards his former band members as friends.

With this in mind there's every temptation to view his new album, and Coxon's fourth on his Transcopic label, as a sideswipe directed at his former colleagues. Barbed lines - "You stab me in the back/You're lower than a snake/Your brains are in you're sack/You two-faced f*cking fake" - run throughout and whether his target is Albarn or some spurned lover, the effect is mesmerising. This is clearly the rawest, most emotionally charged record made by a member of Blur, and it's also probably the best.

Veering from the opener 'Bitter Tears' and 'Baby You're Out Of Your Mind', where he's redolent of Bert Jansch, to the Syd Barrett-style vocals of 'Escape Song' and 'Just Be Mine', Coxon sounds weary beyond belief. "You try the patience of saints and that's just what I ain't," he spits on the latter, the two-track recording only heightening the sense of honesty. Elsewhere is the blues groove of 'Locked Doors', the trundling country ballad 'Mountain Of Regret', that floats away on BJ Cole's pedal steel, and the venomous diatribe 'Song For The Sick' - a "two-minute tantrum about hate," says Coxon - which is up there with Lennon's 'How Do You Sleep?'

Meanwhile, the killer denouement comes with 'Good Times', a desolate piano and steel guitar over the repeated vocal line "I want you to remember the good times." It's heartbreaking but extraordinary - a perfect epitaph for Blur and everything you read the Beck album was meant to be but wasn't. Best of all, no cartoon monkeys, super-fly budgets or guest appearances by Phil Daniels were necessary in the making of this record, and 'The Kiss Of Morning' is one of the best of the year.

    by Adam Webb