Gig review: Graham Coxon at Headrow House, Leeds

“I thought it was a good idea for me to be seen, y’know,” Graham Coxon confesses. It may be a figure of nominal speech, of course – the Blur guitarist has already been spotted by a fair share of eagle-eyed fans and strangers in the downstairs beer hall of Headrow House, more than game to return their greetings. But perched in the venue’s narrow function room upstairs, it is hard to actually see the Colchester-raised star, eager bodies pressed close to the stage, eyes wide in delight.

Regularly accustomed to festival-topping nights with his other day job, the 57-year-old is here amid a brief stripped-back record-shop tour in support of Castle Park, his latest solo record – albeit one recorded a decade-and-a-half ago, left gathering dust across the austerity years.

He arrives to a sea of shopping bags toting local promoters Crash Records, for what is teased as a half-hour solo set – and ultimately evolves into a lengthier conversational piece, brushed close to an hour or so by reflective interludes that muse on a three-decade-plus career near the summit.

For a songwriter lumped in with the Britpop movement, Coxon’s craft – particularly as he found a second wind as a soundtrack maestro – has always contended more light and shade than those tags may imply.

Even with its bare bones, R U Lonely? maintains a psych-tinged descent within its chords; Latte strips its jangle back to a jerky croon; Don’t Believe Anything I Say traffics in the rich vein of Kinks-esque whimsy. When the sudden sludge-grunge middle-eight of That’s All I Wanna Do kicks in, there’s a power and potency that belies the man perched on a stool behind the microphone.

The songcraft at least offsets the star’s tendency to lean back for his anecdotes, frequently hard to hear amid the beery shouts of love and affection from the crowd. Yet he appears to be gently moved here and there; This Time Tomorrow, with its melancholic introspection, softly cracks his voice. “Here’s another cheerful old tune coming down the road,” Coxon says before Alright and its gentle whistle-coda. His fans don’t seem to mind in the slightest.