- Label: 'One Last Fruit'
- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: '17th January 2011'- Catalogue No: 'OLF004'
Our Rating:
Damon Gough's produced a steady stream of releases under his Badly Drawn Boy moniker for what feels like forever now. Over a decade has elapsed since the release of his debut album, 'The Hour of Bewilderbeast' and while it was this Mercury prize-winning debut and the follow-up soundtrack album 'About a Boy' that remain his commercial peak, he’s managed to maintain a respectable fan-base and a (perhaps surprising) degree of respect from the music press.
For all that, I've never really had a great deal of time for his soft, introspective indie shuffling, much less his rambling live shows, which are coming to be known as much for his tendency to stop as for the music or the storytelling.
Taken from the first album in a projected trilogy based around the theme 'It's What I'm Thinking,' 'I Saw You Walk Away' is a sweetly melodic Morrissey-esque slice of mid-tempo jangling indie. The string arrangements provide a nice little backdrop to Gough's reflections, in which he sings 'if I don't crucify myself somebody will.'
He may be right, but with singles like this he deserves a stay of execution for the time being at least.
