Graham Coxon: The Sky Is Too High

The Sky Is Too High, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon's maiden voyage as a solo artist and the head of a record label, starts promisingly enough with the sound of an enthusiastically strummed acoustic guitar. But after only a few seconds, the album-opening "That's All I Wanna Do" devolves into third-rate Dinosaur Jr-style riffing, poor singing, and even sadder lyrics ("Inside my brain / it's just not the same / It's started to rain"). Coxon's infatuation with American indie music worked well on last year's eponymous Blur album, but this and the similar "Who The Fuck" just sound like the work of every also-ran college-rock band to surface in the wake of the grunge years. Even after it shifts its focus to spare acoustic songs, the record never finds its footing. Given the chance to go solo, it makes sense that Coxon would want to show off, but much of The Sky Is Too High sounds as if he's trying to bury his head in the sand. "A Day Is Far Too Long" is the only song here that comes even close to the quality of Coxon's work with Blur; the rest sound like half-thought-out demos or something quickly assembled to be passed around among friends. "I Wish," for instance, consists of the same repetitive pattern played over and over while Coxon constructs a wish list that includes, "I wish I could bring Nick Drake back to life." That's pretty obvious based on a few songs here, but it's unlikely that anyone would mistake this downbeat album for the second coming of Drake, or even the second coming of Gilbert O' Sullivan. Only Blur completists need bother with this depressing, half-formed, thankfully brief effort.