Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant Power Pop, Excellent Rock, March 24, 2006
Okay. First let me say that the lyrics are somewhat . . . basic; but I firmly believe they add a great amount of emotional color, particularly with his delivery, and his voice just keeps getting better. From the opening guitar shucking of "Standing On My Own Again" to the mid-tempo wind-down of "See a Better Day," there are some great effing tunes on this album. It's a step up from "Happiness in Magazines," a great record in its own right. The melodies and rhythms stay with you. At least, they stay with me. Enjoy.
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid and very good...but not as good as the previous one...., November 21, 2006
....Love Travels at Illegal Speeds is Graham Coxon's (guitarist extrodinaire, formerly of Blur) 6th solo album. Following in the vein of his previous album, the nearly perfect Happiness in Magazines, it's full of melodic power pop and rock songs (ironic considering his first 3 albums are all lo-fi do-it-yourself affairs and he left Blur supposedly to avoid playing music like THIS!). This album, full of what Graham calls "songs about love" from every angle, while not as good as Magazine, is still very, very good.
It starts off with Standing On My Own Again, a rockin' opener. The best songs on the album also happen to be the ones constructed best and with memorable hooks: Standing On My Own, What's He Got?, You and I, Don't Believe Anything I Say. All the songs are good in their own way, although Graham does use a Cockney accent he has never displayed on previous albums that can get slightly whiny-sounding.
Graham plays everything on this album except for keyboards and horns, and he does a great job....he's a solid drummer, a good bass player, and as has been well known, one of the greatest British guitarists of his generation, although it's much more subtle on his solo albums than it was in Blur.
Overall, a great, solid album, not as good as Magazines (or even Kiss of Morning, at that) but still a worthy addition to his solo catalog. Now if only those rumours of Graham returning to Blur to do one final album before they call it day (as reported in NME in November of 2006) turn out to be true.........
|
|
|
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Graham Coxon: Love Travels at Illegal Speeds (Virgin), March 27, 2006
So, Graham Coxon is from Blur, only to leave with these facts: he is the least known compared to Damon Albarn, he doesn't have even a group in the real world, and he doesn't sell as much records. In fact, I was a lot more afraid to hear Graham Coxon's works than I was with Gorillaz. (Blame that on the mainstream's introduction.) Basically, Graham Coxon cannot compare to hid lead colleague. But there is one thing he does harness the energy to try to do: writ near alluring songs about love, all while keeping it simple enough to lack any cartoonish saccharine.
Damon took his weird and quirky side and "Standing on My Own Again" proves that Graham Coxon took the rest of the rock music. Through the rest of the album, Graham's one objective is to try to rock through the rest of your heart, and give you love songs of confusion, happiness, and disappointment. The collection of the many. Translation: the theme is exactly what the title depicts. Love can be a bit of a bother in someways. And also songs like "I Can't Look at Your Skin" shows Graham Coxon is tackling songs about the twists and turns of love, all while showing he can rock just as much as he did as an ordinary guitarist. And "I Can't" almost describes the sexual feeling we have for women "I can't look at your skin/Cause its doing me in." And "Don't Let Your Man Know" shows Graham with a crush on a taken woman. Graham interrupts his fill of love with the mellow and almost near-boring "Just a State of Mind", and returning back to the twists of love with "You and I", the only song that songs just like Blur's usual stuff. The one song that bursts the mediocrity is "Gimme Some Love", which harnesses incredible punk energy as an ideal love song. Even "I Don't Wanna Go Out" has energy flinging for a man who claims to want to be alone. "Don't Believe Anything I Say" is where Graham Coxon uses his melancholy attitude to try and keep himself down in the song.
"Tell It Like It Is" has Graham Coxon going through a bit of disappointment where the love object of his life doesn't even admit that she is the love of his life. The bluesy "Flights at the Sea" is enough of a song that will make you sit down for tea thinking about your one. And the next song has Graham asking his crush "What has he got that I haven't got?" in the most disappointment-felt song worth waiting for, "What's He Got?", right before Graham makes you rattle like a snake in the post-punk shakedown of despair "You Always Let Me Down". And what other reason could the most romantically optimistic song "I See a Better Day" be written for?
There you have it that even other band mates can introduce to you some wonderful music, Graham Coxon's approach though is to try and rock his way through the album. Nonetheless, you can feel the happy in his skin rubbing off on the album. I guess there is more to the album than a bumper sticker message of the year after all.
Rating: 7/10
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Interact With Your Music: Discover, listen to, and buy new music, all from the pages of SPIN's digital edition, free to Amazon customers.
by Graham Coxon 
