The more I listen to Graham Coxon, the more astounded I am that he was ever in Blur, and how his talent was wasted under the direction of that pretentious smug shitbag Damon Albarn. As Damon ventures ever further into his post-modern-joke called the Gorillaz, Coxon seems to have turned into the very antithesis of all that is affected and all that is untrue.

This is raw music : the production is never bothered or clean, the emotions heartfelt and obvious. The spiritual heir of people like The Buzzcocks, an emotional and human Sex Pistols, the modern reframing of music from an age when “emo” was a comedian and not a genre. Guitars speak simply and clearly. Vocals strain to reach the truth and not a technical accuracy. Which is why Coxon is a better singer than Whitney Houston could ever be.

If you’ve heard one Graham Coxon album, you’ve heard them all. That said, on “Love Travels At Illegal Speeds”, Coxon has made a stella leap in his songwriting ability – the same kind of leap he made between his first, utterly forgettable, recorded-in-detox-in-5-days “The Sky Is Too High” and it’s sequel, the underrated and brilliant “Golden D”. Here, he takes “Happiness In Magazines” and magnifies it.

There’s no way that his former band can ever hope to even approach the honesty of this : Damon proved he could do it in the last millenium with “13”, but now he can merely imitate cover versions of emotions. Coxon meanwhile takes virtue and benefit of the limited emotional palette of his voice and his self-taught, bastardised guitar style. By not knowing what the technically correct thing to do, he never compromises his vision for mathematical accuracy.

“It’s so lonely to love someone” he sings on “Just A State Of Mind”. And whilst I’ve never thought about it before, rarely has anyone ever been so right within the confines of a six words. 

Fuck the artifice. This is how it feels.