Once upon a time, Badly Drawn Boy was a Next Big Thing. Damon Gough's debut as BDB, The Hour of Bewilderbeast, arrived back in 2000, winning the Mercury Music Prize (besting out, among others, fellow Mancunians Doves, who play on the record) and introducing Gough's shambling musical persona, one that veered radically from hushed pastoral folk to scattershot rock. He followed the strong debut with the impressive soundtrack to About a Boy, which found Gough increasingly focused while embracing his inner Harry Nilsson.
But by Have You Fed the Fish?-- and this was still only 2002-- Gough seemed to be running out of creative steam. The personal, dour One Plus One Is One didn't turn things around, and the dull Born in the UK failed to deliver as well. So: it's back to the well with Is There Nothing We Could Do?, Gough's return to the world of soundtracks, specifically "music inspired by the motion picture The Fattest Man in Britain," a British TV movie starring Timothy Spall as the titular big man.
Gough proved himself adept at spring-boarding off the work of others before, and the same holds true this time around. Bobbling between songs, themes, and snatches of dialogue, Gough captures the right tone of wistfulness and sensitivity in his typically pretty tunes-- melancholy croon-and-swoon chamber folk and pop with an emphasis on upright bass and piano. As with About a Boy, instrumental cues seamlessly rub against more traditional songs. And although most of us can only imagine how well Gough's touching tracks fit the film, he conveys a healthy mixture of sad and hopeful captured in cuts such as the title track, the gorgeous "Welcome Me to Your World", "Just Look at Us Now", "Wider Than a Smile", and "I'll Carry On", songs so winningly winsome they survive being recycled again and again across the set as incidental cues like "Guitar Medley".
In the end, the repetition actually serves to heighten the sense of Is There Nothing We Could Do? as some sort of song cycle, although the cynical may note that fragments such as "Been There, Verified" would work just as well for the average anonymous advert. But what is a record if not ultimately an advertisement for the artist at hand's particular talents? Listened to as such, Is There Nothing represents a bit of a return to form. While only time will tell if Gough can keep up the good work, fans waiting for a sign of his former self can rest assured the qualities that made his music so appealing the first time around remain pleasantly intact and, thankfully, no longer dormant.
