Graham Coxon: The Golden D : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Blur's guitarist Graham Coxon is a one-man cultural exchange program, compensating for American pop geeks' Anglophilia with his own frothing infatuation with the sound of U.S. indie rock, circa 1990. He's gotten the Chicago basement vibe down exactly right: The guitars distorted straight to hell, the rickety snares cracking away and the bursts of double-distilled frenzy that occupy his second solo album recall the glory days of Homestead and Touch and Go Records. What's missing are songs -- instead, we get sketches, riffs and doodles. An atonal, funky swing loop would be a blast if it ever went anywhere, but its lyrics never get past "Oochy woochy/Yeah, baby"; "Satan i Gatan," with its curdled samples and drum-machine fusillade, sounds like a work tape for a really good Ministry song. The only fully realized compositions here are two note-for-note covers of Boston post-punk legends Mission of Burma. It's a nice gesture, but their catalog is still in print. (RS 849)

DOUGLAS WOLK