Graham Coxon
A+E

Predictably disappointed by the recent results of his Derby County, now years away from the glories of the seventies and floating in the lower parts of the Championship after the last fleeting appearance in the Premier League a few years ago, the Genius of Colchester dives back into music and returns to pick up the instrument (or rather, the INSTRUMENTS) three years after the release of "The Spinning Top." I can't deny it, as far as I'm concerned, I was eagerly awaiting this moment - and not so much for the new foray IN ITSELF, but because I imagined - knowing the character - that this album would be very different from the previous one. And if not COMPLETELY different, there had to be some breaking points with the immediate past. And indeed.

Away with the folk, abandoning the acoustic dimension in which the bespectacled one often - and comfortably - waded, with the delightful results we all know, "A+E" (read as "Accident & Emergency") is the triumph of sick, neurotic, psychedelic electricity (often tainted with electronics), turned and turned again in all its forms for a product that certainly does not lack the pop appeal characteristic of the best Blur periods. Graham is increasingly a "one-man-band," if it needs to be reiterated: by now he handles the studio and sound management with the confidence of the veteran he is, plays all instruments including drums, and grants only marginal contributions to producer Ben Hillier - even the cover, for those who might be interested, is his work...

...then you go through the interviews and discover that the work done is DOUBLY important if it's true that the bulk of the tracks are made of "first takes" - the album's atmosphere is spontaneous, raw at the right point, it gives the pleasure of things done on the spur of the moment but also with the approach of a creative always attentive to detail: the makeshift additions of synthesizer and drum machine do not undermine the homogeneity of the whole, rather they seem to broaden the range of influences that echo through the album's layers: to put it briefly and simply you will hear a lot of post-punk, a lot of new wave, a lot of obsessive and nervous rhythm-early '80s, intelligent and non-invasive noise bursts, penetrating curtains of smoky acid guitars, great variety of timbres. For Graham, the guitar is a kaleidoscope of pure inventiveness, the means of communication of a culture capable of extending well beyond the limiting boundaries of the brit-pop manners to which detractors would like to confine him, without succeeding.

So much so that here you'll be able to hear garage-punk descendants of the Kinks in "Advice," hard blues riffs at sustained speed as in "Running For Your Life," the minimal dark and bass-driven sound of the Cure's "Pornography" in "Knife In The Cast," the catchy thrust of a perfect coxonian "stupid song" like "What'll It Take"... and again, a revised and corrected "Coffee & TV" 13 years after "13" named "Ooh, Yeh Yeh" - not coincidentally the most American-sounding piece of the entire album; the more electronic Psychedelic Furs of "City Hall" with an (unexpected) "fogertiana" guitar towards the end, the pure sequential hallucination of "Meet and Drink and Pollinate," the post-industrial tremors à la Pere Ubu of "The Truth," the desert rock'n'roll of a "Seven Naked Valleys" progressively sucked into a majestic mess of distortions and various synthesizers. Hearing something like this in 2012, I must say, is a half-miracle.

And that's not all. The two-month sessions from which this current work is born have also produced another 11 tracks destined to see the light on another album planned by the end of the year. Rumors speak of a bizarre form of "symphonic soul" with a choir and orchestra supporting the soloist, we'll see. Certainly, the surprises will not end here, quite the contrary.

Real score, I would like to clarify: 4.5.