Badly Drawn Boy – Born In The U.K. (2006)

This is the last of the boot fair haul from last month, and I've only just got round to listening. I enjoyed Badly Drawn Boy's (Damon Gough) debut album but didn't feel anything subsequently appealed as much.

This album hasn't changed my view. It's heavy in gentle piano based songs, most of which are eminently listenable, lyrically thoughtful, but in the end, not really my thing.

There's a grandiose opening with Swimming Pool / Born In The UK, a bright song on growing up in the 1970s and 1980s and notions of nationhood. In the middle Nothing's Gonna Change Your Mind stands out as moving and powerful. Things pick up towards the end, with the Bacharach-like horns accompanying The Long Way Round, and the Motown sounding Walk You Home Tonight, and closing song One Last Dance is a gentle, easy ending.

This probably isn't an album I'll return to often. Not because it doesn't contain good songs, more that much of it isn't really to my taste, although the second listening felt better than the first.

Link to album tracks

3* - a gentle album, with some likeable songs