Good Heavens, this is poor! I thought BDB was supposed to be some sort of back-bedroom indie original, not this back-pub-room plodrocker. His being signed to XL should have been the tip-off: the only people who’ll go for BDB are ex-indie fans who long since “got into dance” and now buy one record every year when Dazed And Confused says so. Because they’re groovy and individual types themselves, you understand, they’ll want a musician to reflect that and be kind of quirky too. But nothing you couldn’t smoke to, obviously.
Indie acts seized on by dance labels and fans are always terrible (cf: Orton), and BDB does not buck this trend. His single sounds like a Sunday afternoon band trying to remember “There But For The Grace Of God Go I” except with a couple of ‘modernist’ producer noises. Second track a ballad, third track a long one with more noises to keep the heads happy, business as usual, bish bosh, farewell one pound ninety nine your loss was not in vain, I shall not listen to a Badly Drawn Boy disc again. For heaven’s sake, 69 Love Songs is out in the UK this week: leave this nonsense to the 29p bin where it most assuredly belongs.