As much as I obsessed over A Love Extreme last year, only now do I realize there was another album I responded to in exactly the same way, and it's quite clear why. Englishman Damon Gough, who records as Badly Drawn Boy, put out The Hour of Bewilderbeast in 2000 and like ALE, it's one dude pretty much by himself making a record of all the ideas in his head, putting across different song types with a similar vibe. Even down to the brief instrumental interludes like ALE. UPDATE: What I had on iTunes for Bewilderbeast was about half the tracks, and in the wrong order. The meager selection goes back to the earliest days of adding things, back when storage was at a premium. Now I see the album is overflowing with songs, 18 of them, which is another similarity with ALE.
The key here--and in ALE--is the vibe, man, the vibe, which produces an overall effect that I like to call sonic opium: pleasantly narcotizing, producing a hazy grin and and an easy, even, yet ever-so-slightly-sparkling mood . My favorite band in the whole world (nope, guess again), I See Hawks in L.A., even has a song about that : Beautiful Narcotic Place I Reside.
Not much more to say. Buy it now.
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