Badly Drawn Boy - Born In The UK (EMI)
3/5
By: Matt Tomiak
It has to be said, Bruce Springsteen gets a bum rap from some of the hip crowd. They'll tell you that it's due to a dislike of the chest-beating, flag-waving crass stadium rock pomposity (when of course, apply the slightest scratch to the surface and it's patently obvious that Springsteen's music is nothing of the sort.) No, the real for this is that The Boss is, well, threatening. The scope of his vision, the universality of his songwriting, the breadth of his popularity, the sheer, unabashed ambition of the man...quite naturally, it frightens those whose supposed favourite records are only available via mail-order from some maddeningly obscure label and who field questions on such material with a sneering 'Oh, YOU wouldn't have heard of them.'
Fortunately, Damon Gough a.ka. Badly Drawn Boy, is not one of these deplorable people. He bloody loves Bruce. And in a double anti-snobbery volley, the wooly hat-wearing Manc is using his fifth album to tackle another topic that suffers more than a little bit of bad press: British patriotism.
In truth, they're both red herrings. Springsteen superfan Gough may be, but he's more of an inspiration than a direct influence here. Aside from the title track homage to 'Born In The USA', we have 'A Journey From A to B' (hinting at 'Badlands') and on closer 'One Last Dance', the us-against-the-world idealism and romantic nostalgia (Please take my hand/ we'll have one last dance/ in the place where we first met eyes'), a more manifest homage to 'Thunder Road.'
No, like all the best BDB, 'Born In The UK' revels in candid, homespun whimsical affection. 'Nothing's Gonna Change Your Mind' positively glows with compassion. 'Promises' is an affecting and mature love song. 'The Way Things Used To Be' a country-tinged evocation of a distant, innocent past.
Nor is this anything like a jingoistic call-to-arms either. Gough's attitude to nationalism is summarized on opener 'Swimming Pool': 'Do you think it matters where you were born? No, not really. It only matters that you can be proud of where you came from.' He only really explores the subject explicitly and in depth during 'Born In The UK', a chugging, cinematic two and a half minutes encapsulation of post-war British history, namechecking the 1976 summer hose pipe ban, the Silver Jubilee, the punk explosion, Virginia Wade, the death of John Lennon, Thatcherism, the Falklands War and the implications of publicly displaying the Union Flag. Sheesh. Beat that, Jeremy Paxman.
So he might (as is the wont of Mercury Prize winners) have fallen off the radar somewhat in recent years. But balls to the 'cool' people- in revisiting his original roots and earliest passions, Badly Drawn Boy proves he's still one of our foremost exponents of the songwriter's craft.
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