In 2011, Graham Coxon sorted twenty songs into two piles. One pile was scuzzy and motorik and built around bass riffs. That became A+E. The other pile was sunny and lovelorn and full of 60s mod references. That became Castle Park, released fifteen years later, because when it came to choosing which version of himself to put out first, Coxon picked the angrier one.
It’s hard to argue with the decision. It’s also hard to argue with what he left behind.
The two albums are a genuine study in contrast. Where A+E was abrasive and restless, Castle Park is warm and unhurried, sitting closer to Happiness in Magazines than anything Coxon has released since. The mod and Kinks references run through it without tipping into pastiche because his pop instincts are sharp enough to use an influence rather than reproduce it. ‘Alright’ is the clearest evidence: a caustic love song with a wry lyric about wishing a love rival dead, a whistling solo delivered with the casual confidence of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing, and a melody that sticks immediately. It’s under three minutes and it’s the album’s best argument for taking Coxon seriously as a songwriter in his own right rather than as the other guy from Blur.
The album earns a few genuine surprises. ‘Isn’t It Funny’ runs on vibraphone and a brooding Scott Walker atmosphere that points directly toward all the TV soundtrack work that ended up burying this record for fifteen years. ‘Dripping Soul’ is flamenco with handclaps, unlike anything else in his catalogue, and better than it has any right to be. ‘Forget Today’ is five minutes of Motown-inflected soul-pop with brass flourishes and Coxon’s most stretched vocal on the record. These are not the songs of a man going through the motions of a style he’s comfortable in.
The main reservation is the one that always applies to his solo work: his voice is an acquired taste that a full album tests more than a track or two does. Over ten songs the pinched, childlike delivery occasionally works against material that might benefit from a warmer register. ‘Mélodie Pour Christine’, the orchestral instrumental near the close, is beautiful but drops the album’s warm pop coherence without quite compensating for the disruption. The closer ‘All The Rage’ ends on an existential shrug rather than a devastation, which is charming but a bit deflating.
Coxon said recently that he’s always wondered about relevance, that there seems to be a forever-changing front row. Castle Park is his answer to that worry, whether he intended it as one or not. It sounds like an album made without an audience in mind, which is probably why it has one.
