Badly Drawn Boy's latest features fine layering

It's probably safe to say that the title Have You Fed The Fish? is a little hint from Damon Gough (a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy) to his fans regarding the content of this latest album. While perhaps officially unintentional, the similarity to the line "I feed the fishes into me" from "Camping Next To Water" is somewhat suspicious to me. This album doesn't share the same sound, per se, as the album which that song is from, his 2000 debut The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, but it does give me a fairly similar feeling while listening. I think that it makes a much better follow-up than that soundtrack he made for that Hugh Grant movie about a kid. But what do I know? Not much, as you shall soon find out.

For one, the two instrumental tracks here, compared to About A Boy's seven and Bewilderbeast's three (not counting the instrumental sections of some of the tracks), seem a bit more interesting. No, interesting isn't really the right word. I think that "fuller" would describe the songs better, as well as the album as a whole.

There's much more "stuff" in the songs, so most of them don't sound like his older bare-bones, lo-fi beginnings. You might think it's a good thing (yay for better-produced music!) or you might think it's a bad thing (boo for over-produced music!), but for the most part you won't notice a difference, as the melodies are just as catchy as ever. When I heard this album the first time, I wasn't really listening to it intently, and as a result I thought maybe he had lost his touch and resorted to masking his so-so tunes with layers upon layers of studio junk.

But that was just silly of me. I should have known better than to dismiss it with a shrug, something which unfortunately many critics might do. Songs like "You Were Right," "Born Again" and the title track aren't over-produced junk, but those onions that everyone likes to talk about to make themselves sound smart. You peel off the layers gradually, and end up with nothing.

Er, that's not right? that analogy was supposed to be all about the melody and lyrics at the center of all the layers of production. Because that's what you'll find when you peel a Badly Drawn Boy song. Lost? Good, so am I.

And so too is Gough, as he asks "How can I give you the answers you need / when all I possess is a melody?" in the appropriately titled "How?" I say he's lost not because he doesn't know how he can give us the answers he needs, but because he thinks that all he possesses is a melody.

It's clear that he has much more than that, including (but not limited to) harmony, strong lyrics, good instrumentation and that ever-important catchiness factor. Fortunately, he later confesses (in "The Further I Slide") that "That's all a lie / I can't rationalize."

To you, the reader, I say this: Buy this album. Buy The Hour Of Bewilderbeast. Enjoy them. These are both good albums for almost all occasions, especially naptime, which I think will be when I listen to them next.