It's funny how things change. Though Graham Coxon was indeed a driving force behind Blur, his initial solo releases were more or less overshadowed by former collaborator Damon Albarn and his cartoon bandits. It wasn't until 2003's spectacular 'Happiness In Magazines', an album that shied away from his earlier folk/garage/troubadour leanings and announced Coxon as a powerpunkpop polymath, that most began to sit up and take notice. 'Love Travels at Illegal Speeds' picks up where 'Happiness..' left off; perhaps not surprising, considering Stephen Street twiddled the knobs on both. Coxon's talent for writing both scuzzy, powerful blasts of poppy love-punk (Standing On My Own Again, I Can't Look At Your Skin) and jangly bittersweet ballads (What's He Got?, Don't Believe Anything I Say) is nothing to be sniffed at, while Just A State Of Mind is the best song that Blur never wrote. His snotty, teenage-schoolboy delivery is as vitriolic or as genial as you'd like it to be, and the lyrics here, as the title would suggest, are amongst the most personal and lovelorn he's ever written (First time that I saw you, teeth squeezed my lips/And I thought I'd die without you).In short, it's Coxon's most accomplished work yet; a dazzling, spirited display in songwriting that should eulogise him as one of Britain's coolest musical talents. Funny how things change, indeed.
