TEAM RNS PRESENTS

ARTIST: Badly Drawn Boy

TITLE: Have You Fed The Fish

LABEL: XL Recordings / Artist

RIPPER: Team RNS

0hr 50min total- 73.1mb

RELEASE DATE: 2002-11-05
RIP DATE: 2002-10-21

01 Coming In To Land              1:37
02 Have You Fed The Fish          4:18

05 All Possibilities              3:54

07 You Were Right                 4:52

10 The Further I Slide            3:47

12 Using Our Feet                 4:10
13 Tickets To What You Need       2:48
14 What Is It Now                 2:41

BADLY DRAWN BOY

Ask the average person on the street to
depict a pop star and chances are,
unless they possess a twisted sense of
humour, their fantasy figure will
boast few of Badly Drawn Boy's traits.
Look at him: chain smoking, woolly hat.
Now glance at our pop idols: six-packs,
sterile, bland. Yet judging by the
reception he received at the UK
festivals likes Glastonbury, Badly Drawn
Boy is, to those who value passion over
fashion, one of the few stars in 2002
deserving of applause.

No one else makes aching lo-fi folk
sound quite so transcendental or,
lyrically, renders the ordinary so
extraordinary. Live, moreover, no one
else combines sweet, tender songs with
the wit and quirky banter of a stand-up
comedian. Which is why no doubt his gigs
attract everyone from film stars (Meg
Ryan, Harvey Keitel, James Caan) to
disaffected indie kids to clubbers who
crave tunes, and why his new album is
entitled 'Have You Fed The Fish?'
"because it's the question that gets
asked the most at home".

"The whole album is a reflection of real
life versus the incongruous stupidity of
the life I now lead as a minor
celebrity," he says. "So the statement
that meant the most to me was 'Have
You Fed The Fish?' The fish angle is
symbolic of the fact that it's the
tiniest things that need the most looking
after, as opposed to the jet set
lifestyle that's occurred because of my
songs. I rub shoulders with people that
I've long admired. And that's the thing
I'm trying to understand a bit more
about and whether it means anything to

He has been, as he puts it, a 'minor
celebrity' ever since 2000's long-awaited
debut album, 'The Hour Of
Bewilderbeast', won the highly-coveted
Mercury Music Prize, thanks to its
inimitable, winning combination of wit,
vulnerability and glorious stripped down
tunes. Its fans, of whom there were
many, understandably, included one
Nick Hornby and directors the Weitz
brothers, whose film of Hornby's 'About
A Boy' Badly Drawn Boy scored. But though
its sprightly, winsome songs were the
subject of much praise, introducing him
to a whole new audience, "it didn't pull
my heartstrings quite like 'Have You Fed
The Fish?'" Which is understandable:
said album is superb.

Placing more emphasis on guitars than
on '...Bewilderbeast', it is unusual in
so far as it combines maturity with
ingenuity, resulting in an album that
boasts few antecedents. On 'You Were
Right', perhaps the finest song he's yet
produced, he attempts to comprehend his
new-found lifestyle; ("This album was
started in January, then I took a break
for Oscar, my second child, to
arrive in March and then returned to
LA") by flipping, unexpectedly, from
humour to pathos, lamenting the deaths of
Jeff Buckley, Frank Sinatra and Kurt
Cobain. "I'm most pleased with that
song 'cause it says everything that I
want to say at this point," he says. "It's
a bit of a message to yourself track.
It's a reminder of what's important and
not to lose your marbles. More than
that, it's a reflection of exactly how
I feel about people who've died because

'How', is the sort of track that
buskers will try to emulate and fail,
oblivious to the fact that Badly Drawn
Boy's a one-off. 'Fed The Fish', for its
part, begins like the soundtrack to a
'30s horror film before making its
mark in more amorous terrain ('The keys
to your heart open the door to the
world/You've got to give me two days and,
woman, I'll make you a girl'), while the
nimble 'Using Our Feet' is 'Young
Americans' era Bowie minus the
cheekbones. "For me the key to staying in
the game and remaining credible is to
slightly expand your boundaries and
think, 'Well, I can do a song like
this now. I can do a song with limited
or massive instrumentation'," he says.
"They're one and the same. The goal as a
songwriter is to find the core. I want
to evolve into someone who, ultimately,
can write entirely acoustic albums, like
a 'Nebraska' or 'Freewheelin'' by Bob

Right now, in 2002, he has one prime
concern: to convince those who casually
label him 'shambolic', albeit
affectionately, that it's no longer apt.
"There was only a short period - perhaps
after I won the Mercury Music Prize -
when that was applicable. I was never
inept, but I wasn't as professional as I
might have been. But I don't think it
can be said again because I think
there's something about what I do that
is valid in today's climate. Being
called shambolic is no longer

Being called a maestro, though, is
appropriate. After all, that's what he
is. The Boy is back in town.

http://www.bighassle.com/a_badly_drawn

There was some fake advance of this
release, but enough fakes here's the