Badly Drawn Boy - About a Boy

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Music reviews of About a Boy

Music Review: Great Soundtrack But Not The Follow Up!
Rating: 4 Stars

"About A Boy" is the soundtrack to the new film based on High Fidelity man Nick Hornby's latest screen adaptation. All the music is done by Badly Drawn Boy and it's a really good mixture of instrumental tracks which are surprisingly good and act as short interludes to the longer tracks that have vocals. Most of the songs are like the gentler tracks on Hour Of...There isn't half as much experimentation or variety as there was on that c.d. It does have some tracks that are amongst the best I've heard him do. "Something To Talk About" is about as commercial as he may yet get-it's a gentle acoustic track which sounds a bit like Travis without all those new twee lyrics. Plenty of the tracks have really good orchestration in the background-the strings backing the acoustic jazzy sounds of the band on "Above You Below Me" make this another great track. The amazing 2 minute instrumental "I Love NYE" leads perfectly into "Silent Sigh" which was the first single from this c.d. It has a piano which moves gently up and down the scales while Gough does his first falsetto attempt. This track keeps building as gorgeous vocal harmonies lead this to a nice crescendo-Gough really gets quite animated in his vocals by the end of the track-you may have never heard him like this before. Many of the instrumental tracks are hard to distinguish from one another-they all seem to have the acoustic being strummed to glorious strings-but they serve as the perfect anticipation for the vocal tracks. "River,Sea,Ocean" sounds so like a track from the first c.d. It has the usual slightly off-key vocals that then drift into harmonies to die for. It moves along at a good merry pace and shows that even the simplest tracks often become the most memorable.

The latter tracks may not be as good as the very strong opening-but track 10 is an amazing instrumental track. Drum Programmes, funky guitar and a really cool brass section give this one a real kick. I think the album could have done with a few louder tracks as it all becomes pretty much the same after a while. "Walking Out Of Stride" is a good example of this-don't get me wrong it's a very good song but it sounds like some of the other stuff heard earlier yet maybe not as memorable. "File Me Away" is very different-I'm not yet sure if I like it or not. Gough sounds lie he's woken up with the worst hangover ever and his vocals are totally off-kilter yet he's backed up by some beautiful backing vocals. The music has that unusual quirky flavour you hear on some of Eel's more unusual tracks. Track 14 is more soft sounds-one man his guitar and a harmonica-nothing too special. The whole c.d. closes with a Christmas song done in B.D.B's own unusual style. This c.d. is really very good and should keep are interest levels and our anticipation very high for the proper follow up later this year to his debut.

Description of About a Boy

Alternative Rock CDs

• Music > Styles
• Folk
• Pop
• Rock
• Soundtracks