Music review: Badly drawn boy

The tone of Badly Drawn Boy's new album is set in the first seconds of the introductory track-halfway between smoky crooning and pop exultation. The rest of Born in the U.K. stays velvety and heavily produced but struggles to find its direction. This isn't the finest hour of Badly Drawn Boy or his alter ego Damon Gough-his loving, melancholy and hopeful lyrics are lost among strings and occasionally grating pop-rock choruses, like the one on the album's title track.

There are occasional reminders of Gough's warm sensibility on tracks such as "One Last Dance," where simple production accentuates Gough's traditionally heartfelt, literate lyrical ability: "Where you go I wanna go/What you do I wanna do/I'll be your Troy Donahue/If you'll be my Sandra Dee."

Badly Drawn Boy's previous works all improved upon repeated listening, but none of those albums seemed to lack the focus that's missing from Born in the U.K. As Gough himself says in the opening track, "I don't think I know who I am anymore." Every artist should be allowed a period of rediscovery and self-examination, and this album is far from unlistenable-it's still warm and full of melody. But it's also not of the consistent quality we have come to expect from Gough. Let's wait and see what version of Badly Drawn Boy emerges next time he hits the studio.