Graham Coxon. Graham Coxon's music! The man is one of my current inspirations. I believe he has a way of veiling his music with an aura of simplicity. I think I just realized it yes. For the same reasons I enjoy listening to Paul Gilbert, I enjoy listening to Graham Coxon. Gilbert is a very accomplished guitarist with a distinct technical style mashing string skips and pentatonics--or whatever--you simply KNOW its him when he's playing! Yet, he never shies from writing a catchy pop romance tune, and it's quite humbling.
Once I tried to illustrate a short cheesy comic to his song "Girlfriend's Birthday" -- a song about forgetting your girlfriend's birthday. It's so silly and cute and sad:
she's gonna kill me
don't need a bullet or a gun
it ain't no mystery
after a year of havin' fun
nothing i can do
nothing i can say
cause i just forgot my girlfriend's birthday!
Just one out of quite a collection of songs with titles like "Midnight Marianne," "Dreamed Victoria," or "Alligator Farm." The tracks all appear to be a lighthearted joke songs, but then he pulls out some silky smooth guitar licks and insane picking. To hear him cover Two Become One by the Spice Girls with a few really gnarly chords is bliss. And while he's not much of a singer, I love hearing his voice, there's a quality of genuineness in it.
And Graham Coxon has this same appeal--to me anyway! He has a very creative, off-center type of musicality that often goes one way or the other, or even just sort of meanders about in between. But whether or not you like his songs, you can hear that he loves music and has a thirst for experimentation, quite especially in Blur's "13" (Which is... gasp. officially my favorite Blur album?! finding favorites is always so DIFFICULT.) and pretty much all of his music.
It's just very pleasing to hear a musician play and write what they want while still tossing the grey matter salad. And some Coxon's songs, just, they get me really emotional. Notably his most recent album The Spinning Top. The track "Brave the Storm," is what drew me into the album instantly. Plus, nearly all the songs feature acoustic guitar playing. I grew up listening to my mother and aunts and uncles singing along to the acoustic guitar (virtually all of them know how to play) with classics from the 60's. So instantly, I'm reminded of all the fun camping trips and late night garage jams.
But it's not only that, Graham seems to be able to reach those little pockets of my mind where I find myself in the corner of a decrepit room with shafts of starlight shining through holes in the ceiling, and he sits there with me, watching the moon crawl across the sky in the middle of night in a foggy silence. I'm talking about songs like "This House" and "Far From Everything" and "Tripping Over." The quiet, atmospheric ones. And then there are ones that are fantastic for the creative processes. The ones about taking journeys, the emotions to be had, the people to share them with, the places to reach and see and leave from, the ones about growing. (Brave The Storm, Sorrow's Army, Caspian Sea). I swear, I can say something about each song and how I love them all. Even songs like Dead Bees, which I was initially put off by because of it's sort of dark, more agressive tone sticking out like a sore thumb, especially after Brave the Storm.
But as I am adding to this already ridiculously long post, Home is a song I've come to like several times more than I already have. It started with an interview I was listening to with Graham Coxon and some radio host while on iTunes looking for things to purchase among the free podcasts. Needless to say, it was very good. Insightful of Graham's personality and life philosophy really. They talked about literature and intellectual things and even touched on religion and Graham's sobriety over the duration of two studio albums. I wanted it to go on forever, possibly the most stimulating interview I've heard in awhile. And so quotable yes.
Anyways, I don't know if it was in THAT interview, but Graham had mentioned something about his song Home and simply going home and the feeling of it which caused me to revisit the song, read over the lyrics and simply find a new appreciation of it. So much so I'm posting the lyrics in their entirety:
Where's the beauty buried in this land?
What will harm or give guiding hand
To boiling lives that pull up through the sea
Fresh undug from the inside of me
Oh how long can it be? Breaking habits with me
Home. Sanctuary
Home, back to me
It's so hard to be away
Now my heart empties into sand
Bunt and tiny, hold out my hand
This war we live through, rattles in my veins
Many deaths & short circuited brains
Oh how long can it be?
A brave new world to see
Home. Sanctuary
Home, back to me
It's so hard to be away.
Now your arms, they smooth away the pain
Use your power, to take clean away
A world that makes us suffer so undue
Let's fade away start out lives anew
Oh how long can it be? Breaking habits with me.
Home. Sanctuary
Ain't it so hard to be away.
There's the characteristically organic metaphor and language mixed with the more universal and broad imagery that seems to pull the listener from the depths of space into the little dampened inbetweens of caked mud and tree roots. I like the cold days and warm blankets. And some day I'll be going to my *real* home, up there. And that's what cues the waterworks when I hear this song. I start to think of the day I eventually move out of my house. It could be any house, but I'm here with my family, and I'm instantly sad about leaving it. I could barely handle a 4 day school week away from here. My home always just feels so safe and welcoming. No other place feels like this. And while I mope and grow bored during the long Summer days, I really just yearn for a vacation to take me away so I can learn to appreciate how good it is to be home again. I have been blessed with an amazingly loving family that makes this house a real home. Truly, it's so hard to be away.
But yeah. Graham Coxon. Thanks. I haven't been so attached to music since my iPod slipped into a coma long ago. I absolutely love it. I hope one day in my life to be able to see him play live.
