Graham Coxon / Bloc Party - York Fibbers - 12/3/04
4/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Two of rockfeedback's favourite erstwhile Basement Club night performers of recent months - really, there's just no escaping us these days - join forces for an intimate show. Yup, sounds good to us.
Bloc Party's angular, 80s-themed yelp-pop is certainly in vogue right about now - but this fiery London quartet go about their business with uncommon panache. Their music's great (compelling, barbed, edgy) but they also look great too. Authoritative frontman Kele Okereke and big-fringed boy-god guitarist Russell Lissack both cut a quite a dash when facing each other for a solo face-off at the end of a blistering half-hour set.
Graham Coxon. What a guy. We all love him here. For all the charges levelled against Coxon and his 'difficult' solo endeavours, his material this evening is both accessible and possessive of balls the size of coconuts. Sharp, spiky and often ending with Graham leaping into mid-air with a rock-tastic scissor-kick, these days our bespectacled axe-wielder deals in smashing little bundles of melodic fuzz instancy (See: 'Escape Song', ace new single 'Freakin' Out').
It's even Graham's thirty-fifth birthday tonight, which only adds to the good-humoured, celebratory atmosphere in this most cosy of venues when the crowd breaks into a spontaneous chorus of 'Happy Birthday'. And our hero is on fine form: even cheekily making references to the impossibly trendy 'Primrose Hillbillies'; how apt that he's confident enough to quip about the very part of North London that Albarn so brilliantly eulogised in 'For Tomorrow'.
A touching 'Bitter Tears' forms part of an affecting encore, leaving us to contemplate how a man who played such a big role in the course pop music took in the 1990s is now proving just as intriguing doing his own thing. As eccentric and contrary as he is endearing and fascinating, how rewarding it is that Coxon's new material appears to represent his best work yet.
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