Badly Drawn Boy - New York Roselands - 19/10/02
4/5
By: Joshua K
'No. No. NO. This sounds like f**king shit coming through my earhole.'
Here we are, midway through Badly Drawn Boy's second set of the evening, and he's just stopped new single 'You Were Right' for the third time because the band and sound-men aren't living up to his high standards. In lesser hands, including those of BDB a few years ago, this would be a momentum-killing disaster.
But not now. Instead, amid much equipment-fiddling, the music fan in Damon Gough takes over to the delight of the 3,000-strong crowd. He charms us with his memories of meeting Jeff Buckley at a festival ('he was shorter than me, and that's an accomplishment'), how he had tickets for Nirvana's aborted UK tour, and how 'I used to hang out with Sinatra in the '50s. We ran the Mafia together.' And then 'You Were Right' strikes up again and he's right. The song sounds glorious, life-affirming, infinitely better than the previous attempts in imperceptible ways.
That, in a nutshell, is the reason for BDB's popularity. He's one of us, in a way that the Will
Youngs and Gareth Gateses of the world will never be. He's the real one-in-a-million idol: the 33-year-old bloke who's 'named my son Oscar Bruce - after Bruce Springsteen,' who can now take his own tunes to the masses.
And what tunes they are. So let's quickly 'rewind' (as he exhorts us in third album title-track 'Have You Fed The Fish') to the beginning of this moving performance: two hours and thirty minutes of new songs and old favorites, united by the Springsteen-esque themes of loss, redemption, joy and finding your way home.
Gough tests the new album out right away, opening with the jaunty `40 Days, 40 Fights' and 'What Is It Now', the latter, a perfect cross between the styles of '... Bewilderbeast' and 'About a Boy', addressing 'the moment between shock and joy' when he found out he was going
to become a father for the second time. From here we quickly climb into the stratosphere with a throbbing 'Everybody's Stalking', which kicks off with a primal 'Yeeeaaah!' and finds BDB throwing rock-poses atop the amps.
This was without a doubt the early highlight, but there was enough to make any fellow admirer contented: a plaintive 'Donna & Blitzen'; covers of 'Let the Sun Shine In' and 'Thunder Road' (changing Springsteen's lyric from 'Salvation lies/On this dusty road' to
'In this dirty hat'); the wide-open '70s rock of another new song, 'Born Again'; and note-perfect renditions of 'Silent Sigh' and 'Magic in the Air'.
After a solo-exertion of EP2's 'I Love You All', Gough announces that he's 'too old for encores, so we're going to take a five-minute break.' The band amble off, looking spent, but true to his word they're soon back for more.
'Now the real show starts,' he says re-energized, kicking into a string of 'Bewilderbeast' faves that send the crowd wild: 'Cause a Rockslide'; 'Once Around the Block', dedicated to Matador Records; and 'Fall in a River'. In a playful mood, he even takes a poke at a rock-icon, noting, 'I'm starting to fall in love with the American accent. Like Bono.'
Post-intermission is also the testing-ground for more new tracks. Live, all are sumptuous progressions of the BDB sound. 'Did You Feed The Fish', like Coldplay's 'Politik', starts with discordant keyboard before turning improbably tuneful. 'How' is a songwriter's tour-de-force, enquiring 'How can I give you/The answers you need/When all I possess/Is a melody?', while cunningly juggling three such melodies across its span. And 'The Further I Slide' is a brilliant mix of electro keyboards, synth drumbeats and processed horns.
Soon pressed up against the venue's curfew, Gough growls at the powers that be: 'I'm going to play one more. Just try to stop me!' This turns out to be a near ten-minute version of 'Pissing in the Wind', which grows from a slow acoustic strum into a joyous, full-on band take. The audience sings and claps rapturously, as though we've all joined the Polyphonic Spree, turning the song's down-on-his-luck protagonist into a hero at last.
Praise be for BDB. Amen.
Artists in this article: Badly Drawn Boy
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