But now he was signed to EMI. It was a bold new beginning on a big new label. Badly Drawn Boy was about to charge ahead into a motoring new phase in his songwriting, and his career. Then the wheels came off. Now, musicians are not meant to talk too much about failed projects. Outsiders – fans, ‘industry observers’ – might begin to think the musician has feet of clay. That they’ve lost their mojo. Those concerned with the money aspect of an artist might worry about their ‘brand’ being tarnished. Publicly discussing – over and over again – their creative collywobbles, the musician might be paralysed by The Fear too. But stoic silence wouldn’t do for Damon Gough. He’s not that kind of person. He’s honest, often wincingly so, and forthright and upfront. He does things his way. He’s not a faker nor a spin-doctor nor overly concerned with his own image. That’s why his records are so brilliant. If the birth of the fifth Badly Drawn Boy album was a pain in the neck/arse/heart, he’s gonna – gotta – tell you about it.
The other reason that artists are not meant to dwell on abandoned records is that this raises expectations for the record that actually does materialise. It’s gotta be extra-specially awesome, right? After all that grief over shonky songs, the artist must be 200 per cent cock-a-hoop with the ones that do see the light of day. And who can live up to that?
Well, hang on to your tea-cosies, for Badly Drawn Boy has snatched bold victory from the jaws of sticky defeat. At the second go, and with some ongoing difficulty, he’s finally made his fifth album. It’s called Born In The UK. It’s great.
His own expectations and his hunger played a part, as did honest toil, in the rebirth of Badly Drawn Boy. ‘I just had to regroup,’ remembers Gough. ‘So from September to December last year I was in the studio every day with just my drummer and bass player. I set myself an objective, a task: I’d sit down every day, predominantly at the piano, and try to get a song out each day. A realised arrangement of a song idea with part lyrics and melody ideas. In those months we probably put down 60 or 80 song ideas.’
In December he met Nick Franglen, one half of animated sampledelic organo-dance maestros Lemon Jelly. Franglen is great with computers, and with not a few instruments. He and Gough clicked. In January this they began recording the 25 new songs that Gough was most happy with.
Things still didn’t come easy, mind. Twenty-five songs would have to be whittled down to 18, to 14, to 12. (Ordinarily BDB albums have 14 to 18 songs, but this time Gough wanted to make a ‘concise’ album.) It would take Gough and Franglen almost six months, mostly in the legendary Rockfield studios in bucolic Wales, to finish the album.
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