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Coxon’s exit from Blur came only about two years ago, but it was in the cards for quite some time. On the two occasions I spent time with the band — once prior to the release of Blur and once after — he stood mostly apart from the three other members. And as articulate as he is today, he had little to say back then. The way he describes his departure suggests just how awkward relations had become. "I was invited to leave in kind of a subtle way. I don’t think they thought I would. But I was at a stage in my life when I needed a change both personally and professionally. So I was given the opportunity to leave the group and I went. I had a little rest, and then suddenly I was writing songs again."

Coxon doesn’t just write songs. He sings them and he records them with little or no help. The second drum track in the background on "Song 2" — that’s Coxon. And when I catch up with him, he’s just finishing up the drum tracks for his next solo album. "Yeah, I still do everything on the records. And I have blisters all over my fingers right now from playing drums for the past three days. But I have my own band for gigs. I just got some mates together — I picked them because they were friends and they could play. I didn’t really care if they could play brilliantly or not. The main thing is that we are all on a similar wavelength. We’re all kind of old-fashioned in our approach to music and the English language — we’re old-modish types and indie kids and punks and people like that. And we can make each other laugh. That’s the most important thing. It’s kind of a Manfred Mann traditional set-up: me playing guitar, Owen playing guitar, Toby playing bass, Steve playing drums, Sean playing organ. And Sean wanders on and off as he’s needed. I don’t even feel like a leader among them because I don’t feel the need to be. I wouldn’t want to pack them around on tour and have them have a miserable time. So I leave all the angst in the records and the recording process."

As the title suggests, Happiness in Magazines has its bright moments. But it’s also full of cynical observations, with as many noisy guitar outbursts as tunefully reflective moments. Given Coxon’s artless vocal delivery, wry sense of humor, and penchant for letting songs breathe without overtightening the grooves or overpolishing the melodies, the Malkmus comparison still applies. But the new album broadens his sonic vistas to include something akin to a straight electric-guitar-picking blues ("Girl Done Gone") that stumbles along until the vocals finish and the guitar takes over; the dreamy orchestral pop of "All Over Me," replete with tasteful string arrangements and simple acoustic-guitar strumming; the noisy garage grunge of "Freakin’ Out," with lines like "What do you do when nothing’s wrong?/I ain’t got a clue, I ain’t got no song"; the reflective piano ballad "Ribbons and Leaves"; the Buzzcocking punk salvo "Right To Pop!"; and, with his heavy British accent distorted out of the mix, an angry yet amusing social critique full of guitar bashing titled "People of the Earth."

Yet the overall tone of the album is set by the very last thing you’d expect from a Coxon solo album — songs so loaded with echoes of Ray Davies and Lennon and McCartney that they wouldn’t be out of place in the Blur songbook. Sure, he takes more liberties with the guitar than he was often allowed to in Blur, and the results range from tastefully constructed solos that follow the vocal melody to stinging overbent string attacks. But it’s clear he’s made peace with his inner Brit. "I’m starting all over again as much as I can. I’m not disowning my past, I’m just getting on with the future and paying attention to what’s happening now. I’m just so much happier now that I’m not drinking. And I think I’m a lot nicer. I’ve said really that it’s something to do with reaffirming my roots and what I enjoy about music. Obviously, being in a group, I’ve had to compromise in the past on a lot of things. You know, having to bend my guitar to another person’s shapes. And I just thought that I really wanted to make music that is in line with my roots — the lineage that comes through from America to England back to America and back to England. . . . It goes back through the late-’70s and early-’70s English electric-folk revival and even back to the late-’60s English electric-blues and R&B influences. You know, the Who and the Kinks and the Yardbirds. That’s really where I think my roots are. I’m almost trying to collect all of those things together that gave me a thrill when I was first discovering what chart music was in the late ’70s — really, it’s about making music that I like the sound of, that excites me, that conveys some emotional message."

Coxon’s solo career is, even in his own assessment, a work in progress, and Happiness in Magazines is far from perfect. But the joy in making music he describes does come through. And even if he is Graham from Blur, he comes across as a very likable underdog. Better yet, when he nails it in "No Good Time," a hard-hitting guitar rocker full of cinematic snapshots of London’s party culture ("Wasted little DJ, filling up the floor/Your records are boring but you’re cool as hell/Everybody’s flying, everybody’s sliding, slowly suiciding in a tiled cell"), his years with Blur begin to blur and slip gracefully into a past that Graham Coxon is happy to have left behind.