After a bout with writer's block left most of what would have been the fifth
Badly Drawn Boy
album on the scrap heap,
Damon Gough
regrouped by writing a set of songs inspired by growing up in the United Kingdom. The results are
Born in the U.K.
, an album that, of course, nods to
Bruce Springsteen
's rousing-yet-searching
Born in the U.S.A.
(the Boss is also thanked in the liner notes), but also feels like it's trying to win -- and impress -- as big an audience as possible. At times,
is impressive, but not necessarily with its most ambitious moments. After the relatively restrained
One Plus One Is One
,
Gough
returns to the elaborate, heavily arranged sound of
Have You Fed the Fish?
for most of the album, and too often, his words and melodies end up drowning in their busy surroundings.
"Nothing's Gonna Change Your Mind"
is a particularly unfortunate casualty, a song with good bones that's done in by strings that are somehow massive and fussy at the same time. Meanwhile,
"Welcome to the Overground,"
with its huge choir and equally giant guitars and pianos, sounds like it was written by
Andrew Lloyd Webber
instead of
. To be fair,
does harness the album's widescreen sound effectively at times:
"Degrees of Separation"
is the closest
comes to clearly elaborating on its concept, setting memories of the
Thatcher
era to
rock
that nods to
"God Save the Queen,"
both the national anthem and the
punk
anthem.
"Journey from A to B"
is another standout that makes the most of its
Springsteen
and
Phil Spector
homages. As the album unfolds,
seems to get his footing; it's as though he spends the first half of the album trying to wow his audience but only proves impressive once he gets rid of the pretense. Enough of
's second half works well that it makes the album's early missteps even more mystifying:
"Walk You Home Tonight"
's hints of
blue-eyed soul
Motown
nail the sophisticated but accessible sound that
strains for in other places, as do
"The Way Things Used to Be"
's slight
country
twang and
"Long Way Round (Swimming Pool)"
's
Burt Bacharach
-style
pop
. Still, it's more than a little odd that
keeps trying this grandiose direction, when the smaller, more idiosyncratic, far more personal sound of
The Hour of Bewilderbeast
About a Boy
won him fans in the first place. Even though
intended
for a wider audience, it's likely that only the most devoted
fans will enjoy -- or have the patience for -- the attempts at epics here. His voice and songwriting are so engaging that they don't need to be propped up by impressive-seeming arrangements. As with
is at its best when
shares something personal, instead of writing for an audience of "everybody" that doesn't actually exist. ~ Heather Phares