Badly Drawn Boy

England's Damon Gough, who performs as Badly Drawn Boy, is a big Bruce Springsteen fan. Seems strange at first, because he's one of a young cluster of wounded-romantic singer/songwriters, not an arena rocker. His songs feel intimate even when they are dense with strings and horn charts, and he's convincingly sensual either in a whisper or a shout. But the Springsteen connection is clear during Badly Drawn Boy concerts, both in his determined outreach to fans and in their sense of knowing him like a friend. He gathers you in. The most frequent comparison is to Elliott Smith, another essentially acoustic fabulist of the heart's troubles who was fond of sinuous, insistent melodies. But where Smith often presented soiled boys and girls who found love to be broken, for Badly Drawn Boy, love is forever part of "All Possibilities." Clever at taking the temperature of a relationship and ardent but able to take hard knocks, he can be sweetly caring, as in "I Need a Sign" and "Pissing in the Wind," without coming off like a quivering sap or a fraud. Also like Springsteen, Badly Drawn Boy's mature work is meticulously crafted. So, combining early EPs with a few scattered tracks, How Did I Get Here? is a product purely for dedicated fans, since the songs, if not exactly badly drawn, are at least incomplete sketches. All of Badly Drawn Boy's abilities snap into place for The Hour of Bewilderbeast. It's less experimental instrumentals, more song form and conversational, and presents one of the most beguiling and fully formed sensibilities to pop out of nowhere since Beck's Mellow Gold. If "Magic in the Air" evokes your favorite summer night of shifting passions, Badly Drawn Boy has breached your defenses for good.

Comely, affecting, light on its feet, reflective, and witty, About a Boy matches its movie as well as any soundtrack this side of Magnolia, and it plays as well on its own. Worth adopting. Even more encouraging, Have You Fed the Fish? indicates that success won't spoil Badly Drawn Boy. He cherishes his young family and his hugely expanded audience without being either smug or abashed by either. The album delivers rich, multi-instrument arrangements that sound like he invented them rolling out of bed, plaintive laments that could not be more unplugged, and thoughts about angels and rewinding to move forward that he makes sound like pearls. Meet a sensitive soul for our time.

Judging only from the recorded evidence on One Plus One Is One, Gough still wasn't getting out of his bedroom enough, but the sense of personal warmth triumphing over everyday melancholia is one of the album's biggest charms. On songs such as "Life Turned Upside Down," "Logic of a Friend," and the tear-jerking "Year of the Rat," Gough writes to the sound of his own conversational murmuring and fills in the blank spots with rumbling timpani, keyboards, and a children's choir. (MILO MILES)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide