Badly Drawn Boy - You Were Right audio stream

On November 4th, Badly Drawn Boy, aka Damon Gough, releases his new album ‘Have You Fed The Fish?’ on Twisted Nerve through XL Recordings. The album is his follow-up to 2000’s Mercury Music Prize winning release ‘The Hour Of Bewilderbeast’.

Placing more emphasis on guitars than on ‘...Bewilderbeast’, ‘Have You Fed The Fish?’ is unusual in so far as it combines maturity with ingenuity, resulting in an album that boasts few antecedents.

Take ‘You Were Right’ for example (the first single to be released from the album), perhaps the finest song he’s yet produced, he attempts to comprehend his new-found lifestyle (“This album was started in January, then I took a break for Oscar, my second child, to arrive in March and then returned to LA”) by flipping, unexpectedly, from humour to pathos, lamenting the deaths of Jeff Buckley, Frank Sinatra and Kurt Cobain.

‘How’, in many ways the albums centrepiece (‘How can I give you the answers you need when all I possess is a melody’), is composed of two songs in one, it’s the sort of track that buskers will try to emulate and fail, oblivious to the fact that Badly Drawn Boy’s a one-off.

‘Have You Fed The Fish’ (the title track), for its part, begins like the soundtrack to a ‘30s horror film before making its mark in more amorous terrain (‘The keys to your heart open the door to the world/You’ve got to give me two days and, woman, I’ll make you a girl’), while the nimble ‘Using Our Feet’ could easily have slotted straight onto Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’.

Apart from the release of ‘Have You Fed The Fish’, November sees the return of BDB (and his full band) to the live arena. Starting at Glasgow Barrowlands on Saturday the 23rd and ending at the Brixton Academy on the 10th of December this will be the fan’s first opportunity to see BDB perform songs from not only ‘Have You Fed The Fish?’ but also his last (platinum) album ‘About A Boy’, the soundtrack to the film starring Hugh Grant.

The full tour dates are: November 23rd Glasgow Barrowlands / 24th Northumbria University / 25th Leeds University / 27th Sheffield Octagon / 28th Birmingham Academy / 29th Manchester Apollo / December 2nd Cardiff Uni Great Hall / 3rd Bristol Academy / 4th Nottingham Rock City / 6th Norwich UEA / 7th Cambridge Corn Exchange / 9th Portsmouth Guildhall / 10th Brixton Academy / Tickets 15.00 advance except London 16.50

www.badlydrawnboy.co.uk

www.xl-recordings.com