Graham Coxon
The Kiss of Morning

THE REVIEW

After the first three albums, essentially nocturnal, dark, angry, melancholic, hallucinated ("The golden d" was a real nightmare with very few escape routes), in "The kiss of morning", a bit of light begins to filter through the imposing clouds. 

The title itself, in some way, is a declaration of intent: you can feel that, even though still accompanied by depression and alcoholism, the author is slowly climbing back, giving us his solo work, at least for now, more complete along with the previous "Crow sit on blood tree".

It's an album where jumping from one style to another becomes almost systematic while still sounding deeply Coxonian from start to finish. References to punk ("Escape song"), to acoustic atmospheres that suddenly ignite ("Bitter tears", "It ain't no lie", with a passage, mid-song, characterized by a break and a spine-tingling guitar solo), encounters with the tenderest and most harmless country ("Baby, you're out of your mind") and with the more carefree, vital..."existential" I'd say ("Mountain of regret"), homages to blues ("Locked doors") and grunge ("Do what you're told to").

But also deeply personal and uncategorizable songs, still full of the melancholy and bitterness that characterized the previous albums ("Live line", "Just be mine", "Latte", "Song for the sick"), and a closure, at once sad and full of hope ("Good times"), where you imagine him there, sitting with his lover (the inseparable guitar) playing his very personal hymn to life, enjoying the sunset to the last.

With this album, a cycle closes, a journey in four stages, a "quadrilogy", where the attitude was pleasantly, genuinely "underground". The subsequent albums, in fact ("Happiness in magazines" and "Love travels at illegal speeds"), will be equally inspired, but the writing, the attitude, the intention, the sounds, and in general the air that will be breathed will undoubtedly appear different.