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"…Back to being who I was before…", this is the phrase with which “One Plus One Is One” opens, the fourth effort by Badly Drawn Boy.
He seems to want to make it clear right from the start, “I am back to being who I was.” I believe him, firstly because there is no one like him today in “perfidious Albion”, and secondly because his latest album “One Plus One Is One”, which has been playing incessantly in my stereo, proves him perfectly right.
Having parted ways with producer Tim Rothrock, who had worked with Beck and Elliot Smith and had produced Damon's “About A Boy” and “Have You Fed The Fish”, the XL Recording standard-bearer hands over the mixing to his friend Andy Votel, who had already produced Damon's award-winning debut. The return to Low-Fi, reversing the trend of “Have You Fed The Fish” which offered more conventionally Pop songs, along with the change in the production room, allows him a striking return to his debut “The Hour of the Bewilderbeast”.
It is true that fourteen songs are not few, and many would fall into the trap of repetitiveness, just as many would release two albums. This is not the case for the most oblique songwriter in England, for whom the term prolific is quite limiting. Damon, today as creative and original as ever, disproves those who thought he was already lost in the mainstream of the music market, and those who accused him of sterile symphonic abuses and exaggerated instrumental baroquisms in the previous two albums.
Recorded in Manchester, “One Plus One Is One” features as usual a vast and varied range of instruments, though always well balanced and never pointless. All played along the lines of piano and guitar, in the best folk tradition, the album features as its only whim an overuse of brass instruments, at times reminiscent of Jethro Tull. Listen to believe, after a piano-voice opening in the most inspired Elton John style, the central part of “Another Devil Dies” or the opening of “The Blossom”.
Romantic and dreamer songwriting, as it has accustomed us over time. Indeed, how can one not be moved by the romantic lyrics of “This Is That New Song” where Badly seems to fulfill a promise from 20 years before. Finally, the children's choir is effective in the encompassing “Year Of The Rat” and the final “Holy Grail”.
Perhaps once it would have been an exaggeration, but I am convinced that today Damon Gough is the only one filologically comparable to John Lennon, forgive me but quoting Badly “…It’s easy to defend the logic of a friend…”.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
08 Four Leaf Clover (04:19)
Go on, do what youve got to do
You've got your dreams, I've got mine too
Be strong, get off at the next stop
Don't worry about a thing
Keep taking it easy
This time it's not personal
The universe will help you now
To find the place you can breathe
And do what you've got to do
Keep taking it easy
Keep taking it easy
Come on,
I'll let you borrow my four leaf clover
Come on
Take it with you; you can pass it on
Come on
You know I'm not the kind to say that its over
We'll be rubbing shoulders once again in the sun
Come on
Take your dreams where nobody can find them
Come on
You know I won't be happy till you've won
So come on
Come on over, borrow my clover
Is there anything left that you haven't done?
Go on, do what youve got to do
You've got your dreams, I've got mine too
Be strong, get off at the next stop
Don't worry about a thing
Keep taking it easy
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By Socrates
Badly Drawn Boy fits into this very select group more than ever.
When you listen to these songs, it will seem like admiring a sketch by Michelangelo.
