Album: Graham Coxon, A+E (Parlophone)

Regrettably, the more intriguing acoustic explorations of 2009's The Spinning Top appear to have been but a momentary aberration for Graham Coxon, as A+E finds him reverting to the lo-fi strategies of earlier solo outings.

Reflecting its loose conceptual theme about drunken British lairiness, the raw indie-punk grinds and krautrock pulses have a brutish drive and determination, though lingering this long among a cast of "wasted people in a wasted world" leaves a grim aftertaste alleviated only occasionally by Coxon's sardonic punning on tracks like "Meet and Drink and Pollinate", an account of the dating ritual. Best is the bitter, snarling "Running for Your Life", as deftly sketched a tableau of feral, territorial streetlife as anything by the Arctic Monkeys.

DOWNLOAD THIS Running for Your Life; Meet and Drink and Pollinate; What'll It Take