Badly Drawn Boy: About A Boy : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Single band soundtracks are hard to pull off, but the coupling of Damon "Badly Drawn Boy" Gough and the film About a Boy makes some real sense: Paul and Chris Weitz's film is based on a Nick Hornby novel about finding an emotional center, and Gough's greatest strength are his calm and assured vocals and melodies. The film score also gives the ambitious Gough a chance to break out the strings and woodwinds on only his second album. You can tell he wanted to build a grand orchestral pop monument, and some of his arrangements are delicious, such as the tingling triangle that graces the pulse of "Silent Sigh" and the rolling samba chords and sweet harmonies of "River, Sea, Ocean." In the album's best moments, Gough reaches the lush, poignant territory of Elliott Smith's "Miss Misery" ("Something to Talk About" practically swipes a page from the Smith songbook). The movie-cue instrumentals, underdeveloped sketches and an incongruous fake cop-show theme prevent About a Boy from fully holding together as an album, but at the core of this soundtrack are some elegant, fully realized songs.

DOUGLAS WOLK
(April 9, 2002)