Review Summary: Rock Stars Are Not Cool
Graham Coxon has always been an interesting figure in the Britpop scene. Being the brain behind such quintessential British guitar work as seen in “Parklife” of “For Tomorrow” during his Blur days, he may be one of the foremost figures associated with the genre. It’s surprising, then to find a dark vein of subversion in his views on the matter. After Blur’s 1995 record The Great Escape, Coxon penned a letter to frontman Damon Albarn expressing his desire to move away from Britpop and into music which would “scare people again”. The shift in Blur’s sound in the following years hinted at Coxon’s affinity for lo-fi, grunge-inspired music, but could not predict the lengths to which Coxon would go to escape his Jaunty English past within the spacious bounds of his solo work.
Coxon’s first solo effort debuted in 1998, between his last two records as a member of Blur. A turbulent period in his life, the year saw Coxon’s alcoholism reach a fever pitch and his friendships with his former bandmates begin to dissolve at an alarming rate. This grim subject matter accompanied by sparse sonic landscapes sets the stage for a bleak palette, but Coxon had long since proven himself as an accomplished musician by this stage and had the ravenous following to prove it.
In short, The Sky is Too High is a challenging listen exacerbated by a general lack of payoff. The most accessible track by far is found in opener “That’s All I Wanna Do”, which explodes out of the gate with dense instrumentation and heavily saturated soundscapes. Massively distorted guitars supported by vicious, rolling drums back the timid voice of Graham, yelping “I just want to be with you, that’s all I wanna do”. What Coxon’s voice lacks in range and technical ability it makes up in its earnest delivery and unique timbre. It is important to note, however that this track is an outlier within the record and is immediately followed by the representative “Where’d You Go?”. A relatively homogenous lo-fi acoustic number, this track has a silent beauty that drifts by without fuss. This track paints a decent picture of what is to come in the bulk of the record.
To name another standout track, one must filter through quite a large amount of this somewhat depressive cloud of miasmic music. While not inherently flawed, this isolationist approach to folk is certainly more well-suited to specific moods and can be alienating at times. “I Wish” provides a refreshingly energetic shot in the arm as the record reaches its midpoint. Carrying the weight of Coxon’s disenchantment, this song’s lyrics begin with the line “I wish the music would play by itself, shredded fingers”. The imagery present here is in such stark contrast to the guitarist’s work with Blur it almost makes the latter seem disingenuous. While the song goes on to confront more straightforward themes of depression, these are perhaps more profoundly presented in penultimate track “Who The ***?” in which Coxon yelps and raves about committing thievery and murder for a bottle of gin and later waxing over depressive mental specifics and finally one last scathing look at the rock music industry and society in general. It’s not the wording itself, but the stream-of-consciousness style in which it is presented that gives such a horrific weight to the track. To hear the quiet, vulnerable guitarist recount a murder is shocking even to those unfamiliar to such lighthearted tracks as “Parklife” or “For Tomorrow”.
It’s perhaps in this juxtaposition that The Sky Is Too High finds its greatest strength. It’s always hardest to see the most likable character die first, and it’s a similar feeling to follow Coxon along as he becomes the one out of the Britpop ranks to succumb to the myriad vices inherent in the industry. More modern times see Coxon a sober man with a generally poppy solo output and a member of Blur once again, but his cautionary tale in this record may remain his most poignant statement of all.
