at a glance...

Hometown: Manchester, England
First Recordings: 1997

Members:
Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough) -vocals, guitars, keyboards, bass, percussion, programming, vibraphone, harps, harmonica, whistling, production, songwriting
Andy Votel -production, keys, percussion
Joe Robinson -production, programming
Ken Nelson -production
Gary Wilkinson -production
Ian Smith -drums
Alfie -backing instruments
Doves -backing instruments
Clare Hewitt -backing vocals

Related artists:
Doves, Alfie, Mum & Dad, Oasis, UNKLE, DJ Shadow, Quannum, Radiohead, Richard Ashcroft

Notes:
And an EP was issued in Manchester, and it was called It Came From the Ground, and it was only pressed in a limited way, and it sold all the copies thereof, and the English press spake: "This is good and buzzworthy." And the issuer of the EP was revealed to be a youth named Damon Gough, who called himself Badly Drawn Boy, and he revealed himself to be a quick of wit but deadly shy, capable of talking shit and then humbling himself. (And he had a good and loyal helper named Andy Votel.) And four more EPs were issued, and one was called Once Around the Block, about which Noel Gallagher said, "This is good," and then everyone fell all over themselves for it, and he got to do a semi-techno thing on UNKLE's Psyence Fiction. So the Badly Drawn Boy retired to his friends' studios and cranked out The Hour of Bewilderbeast, and surfaced to play some erratically fascinating shows, and the givers of the Technics Mercury Music Prize said, "This is the best album of the year." This last event happened, yea, in the year 2000.

I am finding this a very difficult review to write, and I don't know why. It's not like I hate The Hour of Bewilderbeast; in fact, I think it's very admirable in a number of ways, not the least of which being that this Badly Drawn Boy character not only wrote and co-produced all the songs on his debut album, but also makes just about all the sounds on the damned thing. (Is it especially admirable that he won the Mercury for it? Not really; but it was pretty cool when he refused the money.) But it's not like I love this album either...quite yet. So I'm ambivalent, and I'll tell you why.

A lot of these songs have a folky and/or country feel, indicating that Damon Gough has the same CD collection as a lot of his U.K. singer-songwriter peers: Wilco, Nick Drake, the sainted Tim Buckley. But Damon is skillful enough with his own melodies that these influences remain only influences, y'know, like everyone has. "Stone on the Water," one of this CD's most beautiful ballads, is a instrumental jazz waltz for its first 2 minutes before turning into a ballad worthy of the Waterboys' best period - although, in the right mood, I might upgrade it to sounding like a more controlled early Van Morrison - and the next tune, "Another Pearl," sounds like late-period Zombies, which makes me love it, except that it keeps going and going and is then followed up by one of the album's worst ideas, a 45-second "I'm down with hip-hop but it'd be better if it was all psychedelic like this" snippet called "Body Rap," so then I'm hating it, but then he follows up with "Once Around the Block," another swinging waltz of such utter ineffable sweetness and pretty, sighing vocals that you can't help but really like the album again.

The Hour of Bewilderbeast (it's actually more like 64 minutes) is 100% beautiful, and the weird touches (the entire studio falling into a river on "Fall in a River," which I know every other reviewer has mentioned, but whatever, it's still cool, or the way "Cause a Rockslide" actually explodes halfway through and turns the song inside out) make it even more interesting. But what good is all this beauty? How helpful is it to me to have this album on, with its '70s-influenced crystalline Lindsay Buckingham-loving melodies? Not bloody much, while the kids and the taxes and the bills keep coming. These songs are sonically interesting and pretty as Mom on Easter, but they don't really ring true to me. I've read that Damon loves Bruce Springsteen (and, indeed, he sneaks in a quote from "Born to Run" on the second track), but he has a lot to learn about the emotional commitment that makes Bruce so great. The realest moments here the songs where guests play along, like the appearance of Doves on "Pissing in the Wind" and "Disillusion," and Alfie on the instrumental "Bewilderbeast." It's like Damon's suddenly freed up to emote when he's not so busy worrying about being a one-man band. But this is rare on this record; I need truth with my beauty. And so I withhold my heart for, oh, I dunno, probably his second album, which will be the greatest thing in the history of recorded music or something.

If you like Badly Drawn Boy, check out:
Doves Lost Souls
Van Morrison St. Dominic's Preview
The Waterboys Fisherman's Blues
Bruce Springsteen Welcome to Asbury Park, N.J.
Oasis Definitely Maybe
Stevie Wonder Music Of My Mind
Ben Harper Burn To Shine

-- Matt Cibula