Graham Coxon: The Golden D (Transcopic)
While Damon Albarn is busy getting over his big break-up, Blur's guitarist continues his solitary love-affair with noisy American hardcore, ripping and shredding it up on such fast, frantic songs as The Fear, My Idea Of Hell and Leave Me Alone. This is Coxon's second solo outing following 1998's The Sky's Too High, and once again he handles all the playing, producing and artwork himself. It's not all scattershot guitar grunge, though: Keep Hope Alive sounds like a ballad from under the floorboards, while Oochy Woochy is a jazzy, noodly sidestep into breakbeat territory. There are two cover versions, Fame And Fortune and That's When I Reach For My Revolver, both by Mission Of Burma; however, the whole album has the uncomfortable feel of a pale tribute to Coxon's American anti-heroes.
- Kevin Courtney
David Holmes: Bow Down To The Exit Sign (Go Beat)
The new-school Belfast Cowboy's love affair with cinematic fare and downtown Manhattan reached an euphoric peak with 1997's Let's Get Killed, so it was inevitable that those funky samples and breaks would get a rest for this run. Bow Down . . . does possess a taste for the stalls and the streets - albeit on a much darker scale. Holmes has never wanted for ideas and he builds track after track into edgy, noisy, claustrophobic epics. Aided by Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, one-time Tricky foil Martina and New York street poet Carl Hancock Jr, 69 Police, Sick City and Out-run are as urban and sticky as their titles suggest. A mess of the blues for a walk on the wild side, it's Holmes introducing rock and dance's extremes to one another to see what comes next.
- Jim Carroll
Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour Of Bewilderbeast (XL Recordings)
There's nothing inept about Damon Gough's lo-fi musical sketchings; the Manchester man with the cartoon-like monicker has created an album of real ideas and emotions, using his wide range of talents to add colour and depth to songs such as The Shining, Camping Next To Water and Another Pearl. Gough plays a dizzying array of instruments throughout these 18 songs, yet the album sounds neither cluttered nor too lengthy. Instead, Gough opens up a wide landscape of possibilities in the strange arrangements of Everybody's Stalking, This Song and Epitaph. There's an echo of Elliot Smith's outsider folk and a hint of Americana in among the burning homefire arrangements, but the crackling creative energy of Bewilderbeast, Magic In The Air and Pissing In The Wind signify that Badly Drawn Boy is no two-dimensional caricature.
- Kevin Courtney