Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I never really got Badly Drawn Boy, mostly, I think, because of the context of my heretofore limited exposure of him. Last year I would catch a glimpse of a video from the ABOUT A BOY CD in the (very) early morning hours while waiting for the coffee to percolate, during those limited, commercially non-crucial hours when MTV practices some limited and inadequate fulfillment of the promises it made back when that rocket used to launch at every hour on the hour and they had VJs and actually played music videos all of the time. But BDB's music seemed to be playing sideways to itself, and his off-kilter voice was more jarring than anything else. On top of that, the guy bears an uncanny resemblance to the waste of skin I used to encounter every morning when I had an office downtown, the one who always wanted a dollar for a bus ride on an early morning 40-ouncer. Accordingly, I was sometimes puzzled, sometimes bemused, to read the almost daily adoration which poured forth from the British music press about his efforts. That's some multitasking, methought; how does one type so well while genuflecting? I just didn't get it. Until now.

"HAVE YOU FED THE FISH?" is not an immediately accessible work. My immediate reaction during the first third of the CD is that it was a bowl of air: full of shape, but no substance. Then about Track 6 or so something caused me to perk up and take notice. When Track 6 segued flawlessly, both music- and topic-wise into Track 7, I took notice. I looked at the CD jacket. Eerily, and prophetically, the tracks were titled "I Was Wrong" and "You Were Right." Yes indeedy.

Badly Drawn Boy is continuing the work done by Ray Davies and, to a lesser extent, Squeeze, which is to draw on the tradition of British popular music and to push the edges gently but firmly into new directions which are natural, but unfamiliar, extensions of the old. If you take the tracks from "HAVE YOU FED THE FISH?" singly they don't sound right for the most part, not at all (hence the problem with the video exposure). Taking the work as a whole, however, from beginning to end, one begins to see the context. Ray Davies' had a similar problem with the later Kinks' albums, from PRESERVATION SOCIETY on, really. I think that BDB is aware of it, too, and plays off of it. "The Further I Slide"starts off with an almost commercial intro, a kind of a gently funky groove that has you tapping your toe, before he slides sideway into another, weird direction, and just as you're thinking to yourself "What the fu-hell is this asshole doing?" He gets back into his original groove. Just when you thought that nothing new was going on, here's a guy who's willing to try to come up with something.

Some enterprising FM jock should stick "HAVE YOU FED THE FISH" into the CD player, lock the studio door, and let the thing play all the way through. People would get it. Oh yeah, I just saw the video for "You Were Right." It works. But then again, I've heard the whole CD. You should, too.