Badly Drawn Boy - A Journey From A To B (XL)
3/5
By: Michael Cragg
You can't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for Badly Drawn Boy (or Damon Gough to his Mum). It all seemed to be going so well after the release of his debut proper, the wonderfully ramshackle 'The Hour Of Bewilderbeast'. Following his Mercury Prize and countless sold out tours, it seemed he could do no wrong. But it's surprising what soundtracking a Hugh Grant film (the so-so 'About A Boy'), and a bloated follow-up (the excruciating 'Have You Fed Fish?'), can do for your popularity.
By the time 2006's 'Born In The UK' came out, the music landscape had become littered with dull acoustic 'heroes' (Blunt, Morrison, Nutini et al) on the one hand, and the orchestral grandeur of Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene on the other. Nestled musically somewhere in the middle, there seems to be an ever-dwindling audience for Badly Drawn Boy albums.
On the whole this is a shame. Gough hasn't lost his knack for a charming, bittersweet shuffle, and 'A Journey From A To B' is a love song so crushingly sweet it should come with a health warning. It's this charm that just about saves it from MOR hell, although it's difficult to shake the feeling you've heard it before in a Richard Curtis film, or playing over an 'emotional' scene in an ITV drama. Much better is the Go! Team remix which tones down the shiny production to a rusty muffle, adding a lovely recorder melody. Ironically, it wouldn't sound out of place on 'The Hour Of Bewilderbeast'.
Artists in this article: Badly Drawn Boy
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