Sabato 17 Gen 2009, 8:32
Damon Gough is a genius. There isn't really much to add to that statement, but since I've been listening to Have You Fed The Fish again, and since I've started this journal entry, I'm going to knock myself out by adding more.
The lack of critical acclaim since his Mercury Prize winning debut, in comparison with the mindless fawning that happens over the turgid outpourings of Coldplay or the idiotic attempts to seem hip and cool by claiming a backward looking bunch of miserabilists from Glasgow are the best things since sliced Mary Chain, is astounding.
I remember HYFTF being on the receiving end of lukewarm reviews when it came out. The Hour of Bewilderbeast was an outstanding debut, it's true, but HYFTF is a completely different kettle of piscine activity.
Perhaps the reaction was something akin to the hiss of Judas when Dylan went electric, because HYFTF is an electric album. Not just in the use of more electronic instrumentation, but in the move away from the acoustic/folk troubadour vibe of Bewilderbeast towards a work that fizzes with the electricity of confusion and change.
Gough claimed at the time that HYFTF was his tribute to personal musical hero Bruce Springsteen. It's a tribute that takes its inspiration from the work of another artist but doesn't slavishly copy it. The power chords, the grunt of blue collar expectation that life can be better than it is, plus the rawness of Springsteen is embedded in Gough's work, but he hasn't remade Thunder Road.
HYFTF is the Badly Drawn Boy album that is most likely to get me singing along, jigging about and grinning like a lunatic. The romanticism of Bewilderbeast is still there, the documenting of his love affair with his missus, but there's an added edge that comes with new experiences and new territory.
Gough had moved from lowkey acoustic darling of the music inkies (a status achieved through the likes of EPs 1-3) to everyone's favourite behatted "Mancunian" (with the success of Bewilderbeast) and there must have been a cosmic shift in his life. Feted by the mass media and his cracked genius recognised at last, what other album but Have You Fed The Fish could he have written?
The album is chockful of arrogant swagger. From the self-mockery of Coming Into Land (that cloud looks just like… Badly Drawn Boy!) to the cocksure percussion and guitar of Born Again, from the lushly orchestrated All Possibilities through the sleazy funk of The Further I Slide to the darkly delicious lullaby Bedside Story, everything about this album is different to what came before.
Except it's not. It takes themes that have been there from the first EPs and makes the most of having money to use whatever instruments, studio, production Gough wants to use.
Gough the perfectionist claims never to be happy with his output. Mere mortals like me, listening to his work, surely struggle to understand.
He deserves more recognition. He deserves less carping from soft-arsed journalists because he isn't constantly churning out his first album (hello Chris Martin) but is growing as an artist and incorporating that growth in his work.
Have You Fed The Fish is, in my opinion, his best album. It is the most Gough-like of all his albums - flawed genius writ large.