Review:

on 2012-04-01 CharlesMartel Said:

Damon Gough burst onto the UK scene with some force, winning some record industry back-patting prize or other in the early part of last decade. But as is so often the case with these prize-winners, the early promise falls flat. In Gough's case it fell flat very early, probably about midway through his debut album, "Hour of the Bewilderbeast".

One thing I will say for it, with sixty minutes plus of music crammed on here, in terms of quantity you can't say you dont get your full fee in terms of quantity. No one should doubt this in terms of the quantity. It's the quality which is sadly lacking. Gough gives himself an hour to explore as much as he can, in as wide a range of musical styles as he can. This scatter gun approach to recording seems to have been based on the premise that if he tries hard enough, at least a couple of his tracks will stick. And to be fair, a couple do. "The Shining" and "Stone on the Water" are pretty OK. It's just the rest of the album.

In fact, the disparity between the best and the worst of this album is so stark that it makes you wonder if it is the same artist, or producer, or songwriter or whatever. "Pissing in the Wind" and "Say it Again" are just plain awful, and I never really saw the point of these under a minute fillers which were inserted into the album, as seemed to be fasionable around the end of the nineties - Oasis and Texas for example. And something else, for a guy who is supposed to be a songwriter, there are an awful lot of plain old instrumentals on here.

In fact, songwriting is one of the weak points. Even when at his best, Gough writes some pretty strained stuff at times. How did he manage to image camping by the water with fish-infested slaughter for instance  the latter is utterly ridiculous. I struggle with this in ways it is difficult to imagine. I want to like it, but find that it doesn't want me to like it at all. If it did, then "Hour of the Bewilderbeast" would be a different album.

As it is, it is rather plodding. It lacks sufficient decent melodies. It is mono-paced and rarely varies. It tries to be introspective in a hobo-ish sort of way and fails to achieve it. And the song writing is at times awful. And yet, Damon Gough achieved success with it. Hardly surprising I guess at a time when the British music scene was failing to produce anything of real note. Therefore, once the music scene picked up again (though some may argue that point) it should come as no surprise that Badly Drawn Boy rather faded into the background.
Rating: 3/10