He's feted by the British, but his biggest inspiration is Bruce Springsteen. He cut his teeth on scatterbrained no-fi folk music, but he made his millions from sentimental balladry and Gap commercials. He's the scruffiest, gamiest shambler you'll ever set eyes on, yet he's got Hugh Grant's phone number. The artist exclusively known as Badly Drawn Boy might as well have stitched "E-N-I-G-M-A" onto that ethnic knitcap he wears around all security blanket-like. So how do we approach Have You Fed the Fish? On his terms? Nope. I've been through this thing an impossible number of times, and the only way to take it is on ours.
Gough doesn't make it easy on us, though. A goofy, self-deprecating skit opens the proceedings, followed by a nondescript, throwaway instrumental called "Coming in to Land". And then we're hit with the ridiculous title track, which walks what is fastly becoming Badly Drawn Boy's very own fenceline between execrable REO Speedwagon pomp-pop and touching, emotive songwriting. It doesn't look pretty so far.
But then comes "Born Again", an endearing (and rare) rocker where Gough manages to pull off sincerity without pandering, and the moment at which he hits his stride. Here, his self-consciousness slips away, allowing us to relate to the song without envisioning him as the song's narrator. Which is nice because Gough's more personal offerings (and I use the word "personal" loosely here) aren't the most original ever committed to DAT-- they're nice little saccharine ballads which could be love songs from anybody to anybody. When Damon brings himself too far into the picture, as often happens on this record, all it reveals is that he's just not that interesting a character. So it's moments like this, when he lets go of his ego and just plays the damn thing, that work best.
"40 Days" is more of the same stuff he kicked out on The Hour of Bewilderbeat, and about on par with that album's better material. It's a jaunty narrative, the kind of song you might sing along to in the morning to help shake a hangover. And despite that the retro-glossy "All Possibilities" attempts a nods to Love Unlimited and comes out "Love Boat", his enthusiasm is charming-- the guy clearly loves what he's doing, and the joy he communicates in the song is infectious.
Of course, the frustrations remain. "I Was Wrong" is a delicate Elliott Smith type thing with a genuine Nick Drake fragility, but it disappears before it has a chance to break your heart. Instead, Gough insists on a failed attempt at cleverness by merging clumsily into a smoothed-over Fleetwood Mac substitute called "You Were Right". It apparently wasn't enough for him that this track even had to appear on the record-- it had to take one of the album's better offerings down with it. Fortunately, it's not a total loss, as he drops some pretty entertaining lyrics (which I won't spoil here), and a whistle solo (can't beat a whistle solo), but the momentum's out the window.
And that's just the thing with Badly Drawn Boy-- he doesn't care about momentum, or continuity, or a lot of other things that you might quite reasonably care about when you sit down to listen to his records. He's going to give you devastating insight and wacky novelty, and by god, he's going to give them to you in the same song if he damn well pleases. Which would be fine and everything-- lots of folks, not least of which is Elvis Costello, have made their names on doing just this-- if he could only pull it off. But he can't, and there's fatal proof of this in a song like "How?", which dares to spotlight the whole problem with the lyric, "How can I give you the answers you need/ When all I possess is a melody?" How, indeed?
So it's up to you, my friend, to opt out or to love unconditionally. Will you accept Badly Drawn Boy on his terms, no matter how inscrutable? Will you indulge his penchant for sweetback 70s funk long enough to embrace the lovely "The Further I Slide"? Will you endure the music hall diversions of "Tickets to What You Need" to arrive at the impassioned coda of "Bedside Story"? Will the frustrating interludes, ill-conceived genre experiments and half-finished ideas keep you from finding the life-affirming power that lies in the chewy nougat center of Badly Drawn Boy's music? I'm not sure he's worth it, personally, considering the ease with which we could toss on a record from one of his many on-sleeve influences and witness perfection. But luckily, there's always the 'skip' button.
