About A Boy

Damon Gough is talking about his ice-cream van. "I wanted to put a PA inside an ice-cream van and to do ice-cream van tunes of some of the melodies on the album. It will be ready for my UK tour in the autumn, complete with Badly Drawn Boy choc ices and what-not."

In the world of the Badly Drawn Boy, ice-cream vans come with the territory. What also comes with Damon Gough is the year's finest debut album, The Hour Of Bewilderbeast. Here you'll find songs with surprises at every corner. The comparisons you could make are ridiculous (colliery brass bands, Beck, Liberace and Paul Simon) so just revel in the fact that Gough's take on classic songwriting, idiosyncratic phrasing and marvellous, mischievous, cheeky grooves is something that will cross all taste divides by the year's end. That much is guaranteed.

Yet few could have predicted that the charmingly shambolic Gough would come through with something this fine. The nature of his arrival - via some lovely, crafty singles on his own Twisted Nerve label, unpolished live shows and an eye for the offbeat promotional idea such as a limited edition music box which plays a melody from his first single - is wholly at odds with how we expect our pop acts to be tarred and feathered these days. There is no Svengali in the background (unless you count his fellow jesters at Twisted Nerve) and no army of stylists on the sideline. Instead, there's a boy, a woolly hat, an album and a clutch of remarkable songs.

Gough's happy with the reaction to date to his debut. "I was expecting people to say that they thought it was going to be weirder or with more beats. I certainly did record material like that, but it didn't feel right alongside the more traditionally song-based stuff so that's what I concentrated on. I wanted people to be able to look back on it in 20 years' time in the same way that they look back on an early Bob Dylan album, like an establishing moment for me. I don't think people look upon me as a songwriter and I hope this changes their mind. I've had the odd flash of inspiration. Like Once Around The Block - that was a good song - and It Came From The Ground. As long as people are willing to listen, I'll be around."

For Badly Drawn Boy, being around for the long term matters a great deal. You can see it in both his heroes (Bruce Springsteen) and his approach. "The art of writing songs seems to be left to the oldies like Neil Young or Steely Dan," he says. "I thought as a contemporary young artist that this was what I should be doing. Lyrically, Bruce Springsteen's early stuff is phenomenal. He's not the coolest reference point - but check out his debut album, made when he was 21. If he was to release that now, it would blow everything else out of the water.

"In 20 years' time, I'm going to be sitting on a stool doing a gig and singing my songs, which is how I started. For me, it's a longevity thing. I don't want to just fit in now. I think the fact that the album is song-based sets it apart. It's so ordinary that it's bold - because most indie-type bands have to use some sort of tool to be in your face, be it how they present themselves or what they play."

It's obvious that Gough has no plans to play the fame game. "Attention is like a drug and a lot of bands fall into that trap without realising it," he observes. "They get all this press because of how they sound or look and they try to redo that to keep that attention. Oasis have only been in the public eye for seven years, which is a very short career, and they're already been written off as has-beens. Bands are considered past their sell-by date after four albums, while bands like the Stones are still going. It may have always been like that and people may not take you seriously when you look too old to be doing the job you are doing - but there are loads of oldies who are still writing great songs."

WHEN it comes to his own work, Gough is slightly reticent. "I'm not really a master of any of the elements that I do," he shrugs. "I'm not a great guitar player, I'm not a great lyricist, I'm not a great vocalist, I'm not a great musician but the combination of all of them being 50 per cent there means that the sum of all the arts is better than any one of them.

"When I'm writing, I try to find words and phrases and shapes of words which complement the melodies that are there."

The trick now for Gough is to balance the roles of songwriter and merry prankster. "I had been tagged as some sort of joker, to the detriment of some of the music, so I was happy to leave the ice-cream van on the back burner for a while to establish the fact that I'm a songwriter with a proper album and the funny side of things is just part of my life. I wanted people to see me as a force to be reckoned with in a subtle way. I've been trying to do that since the word go - but then the humour side comes in.

"I was working in my parents' factory when I released my first record," he recalls, "and I fully expected to be still working there and doing music by night like I used to do. The strangest thing for me has been to be so busy. At times, it becomes your whole life because you can't find the time for your own life outside it. Badly Drawn Boy has taken over for now. The name may be synonymous with me (because it is me) but I can still hide behind it. I don't want to give everything away, because I give away so much in my songs anyway - but it's nice to have made some sort of mark, no matter how small it is."

The Hour Of Bewilderbeast is out now on XL Records