When king of the mods ™ Graham Coxon finally managed a good album with 2004’s ‘Happiness in magazines’; his long time fans were vindicated. He stopped the directionless acoustic noodlings and made an album worthy of comparisons with one of Blurs finest- ‘Modern life is rubbish’, the awards came flying in and a new-found commerciality beckoned.

This 6th solo album is more of the same but in this case that isn’t a bad thing . Getting off to a storming start with the uplifting single ‘Standing on my own again’ evoking images of a scene from Teachers or a program of that ilk with youngsters doing youngster things, the intentions are good. ‘Don’t let your man know’ is equally as urgent and poppy and the Pixiesque ‘Just a state of mind’ is as near as Blur’s 1997 self titled album Grahams solo stuff has got to.

Although the punky tracks work well, it’s the introverted acoustic ones which exceed expectation; ‘See another day’ is great anthemic pop with Graham giving up one of his finest vocal performances (those singing lessons worked a treat!). ‘Don’t believe anything I say’ is easily the sweetest moment on the album and ‘You and I’ is the Beatles played by a garage rock band.

Of course there’s the odd track which deserves an automatic fast-forward, ‘I don’t wanna go out’ is no brainer punk rot. ‘I can’t look at your skin’ is Stranglers punk as opposed to the Pistols and ‘Gimme some love’ wishes it sounded like The Sonics rather than Herman and the Hermits.

With the two main men of Blur pushing in such different directions a reunion becomes even more impossible and if they both continue to make superior pop albeit in different flavours, the impressive prospect of them making their music without a mention of their previous band becomes a bigger reality, who’d have thought?! 8/10

Chris Todd