Graham Coxon – Castle Park

With Castle Park, Graham Coxon, formerly of the Brit-pop parish with his time spent as a founding member of Blur, is back following an extended hiatus from solo outings since A+E in 2012. This is not a typical release however: recorded in 2011 as part of his sessions for his eighth studio album A+E and intended for release shortly after before being put on the back-burner to make way for further Blur albums and film work, Castle Park then gathered dust for fifteen years to be heard only in part at live shows and never made available to fans as a full record, that is until now.

Castle Park kicks off with Billy Says: a summery and nostalgic opener built upon foot-stomping percussion, weighty bass-lines and a simple yet infectious guitar hook that sees the multi-instrumentalist channel their innermost 60’s British Invasion sound. A mainstay of Coxon’s live act, fans may already be familiar with this track and its bopping melody, character-driven narrative and jangly rock’n’roll guitar hooks. Up next is the Kinks-styled Alright – a track that would have neatly fit in The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society with its playful tongue-in-cheek humour, its shrill whistles and Coxon’s a-capella troupe “pom pom poms” that pepper the track with an air of joyous whimsy. On the bluesy, syncopated guitar-led rhythms of There’s a Little House, Coxon is joined by vocalist Lucy Parnell, who acts as a wonderful counterweight to Coxon’s wry vocals on another quaint, Kinks-inspired entry that provides some direct nods to Ray Davies lyricism with Coxon’s chime and Parnell’s response, of “And your friends are there(and my friends are there)”.

In a surprising turn, the excellent Mélodie Pour Christine sharply pivots from the Mod-stylings of Castle Park and appears suddenly as if to remind us that Coxon is in-fact also an incredibly talented film and television composer, in which Coxon has spent the latter half of his solo career composing soundtracks for works such as Channel 4’s The End of the F***ing World to Netflix’s I Am Not Okay with This. An instrumental track that features violins, harps, and further choir vocals from collaborator Parnell, Mélodie Pour Christine feels ready-made and tailored for a Tim Burton motion picture with its tumultuous and temperamental composition that pulls back and forth between its folk-lore soundscape, sorrowful yearning and a determined optimism that builds to a soft crescendo in the track’s closing moments.

Castle Park, for better and for worse, is an album that seems to have been put to print with completionist fans in mind and so kickstarts a deeper run of reissues and collections of Coxon’s entire solo outings over the course of the next year. For fans looking to delve deeper into the influences of one of Britain’s most versatile songwriters, that’s exploring the roots of their sound, then Castle Park is for you.