The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

Product Information

Robert Dimery; Michael Lydon (23 March 2010). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition. Universe. ISBN 978-0-7893-2074-2.

Mr Shady released his third album, which included the mega-hit Stan, featuring Dido on vocals. Remember Dido? Stone On The Water is simply beautiful, building from a soft, slightly mournful, acoustic beginning, to a tap-your-feel tune, which if anything ends slightly too soon. Straight on its heels is Another Pearl, with a fuller, more electric sound, and then the strange little music snippet Body Rap. If those musical changes don’t keep you intrigued, nothing will. The new millennium gave us the year of Since I Left You, Rated R, The Hour Of Bewilderbeast and Kid A. The band's eleventh album saw Robert Smith conclude the "dark trilogy" that had started with Pornography in 1982 and continued with 1989's Disintegration.Six years before, Britpop itself was crystalizing, with Blur’s Parklife and Pulp’s His ‘n’ Hers coming out right as Oasis went on their brash run of first singles leading up to Definitely Maybe . As summer arrived in 2000, Doves had just released their debut album, Lost Souls , Travis were promoted to the Pyramid stage at the Glastonbury Festival after a celebrated set on the Other stage the previous year, and both Coldplay and Badly Drawn Boy were about to put out their first full-lengths as well. The moment was propitious for sober, self-reflective guitar slingers. a b Blashill, Pat (12 October 2000). "Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour Of Bewilderbeast". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 20 April 2001 . Retrieved 9 February 2015. That was four years ago—16 years after the album’s release. Since that sunburst intro, I felt compelled to study the whole of Gough’s catalog. In a discography rich with treasures along the lines of Sam Beam/Iron & Wine, I still consider “The Shining” to be his most resplendent (although “In Safe Hands” from It's What I'm Thinking (Part One Photographing Snowflakes) undoes me in equal measure) in part because it sets in motion an unlikely masterpiece. The Mercury Music Prize-winning album was released in 2000 and was Damon Michael Gough’s debut after a few years of putting out EPs. The album was a commercial success, going platinum in the UK and delivering three top 30 singles. Another infamous meltdown was at a festival in Northampton when Gough joked: “I don’t think I’ve been to Northampton before… I’m sure I’d remember because it’s a shithole.” A woman in the audience took exception to this and the row ended with Gough throwing a tambourine at her. He’s at pains now to explain he always instantly regretted these incidents.

Badly Drawn Boy‘s debut album The Hour Of Bewilderbeast is being reissued by XL Recordings in December, in deluxe CD and LP editions. If you had to mark the timeline when the sorta-genre “post-Britpop” came together, somewhere in the middle of 2000 would be close. Manchester-area musician Damon Gough, he who is Badly Drawn Boy, counted Doves and Coldplay as pals, even as the three were put in direct competition throughout 2000 for UK music industry honors like the Mercury Music Prize and the Q Awards (where they all faced off in two different categories). Something of a compromise was made at the Q Awards, as Parachutes took home Best Album and Badly Drawn Boy was deemed the Best New Act, but the Mercury Prize only goes to one winner, and that year it was The Hour of Bewilderbeast . At that ceremony, when Gough strolled up to the stage cigarette-in-hand to accept his trophy, some of his first words were shout-outs to Coldplay and Doves. The trio released their debut album, which included The Cedar Room, Here It Comes and Catch The Sun.a b DiCrescenzo, Brent (30 September 2000). "Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of Bewilderbeast". Pitchfork . Retrieved 22 July 2011. Cameron, Keith (23 June 2000). "Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of Bewilderbeast". NME. Archived from the original on 11 July 2000 . Retrieved 22 July 2011. From the haunting string and muted brass opening to The Shining, you can tell that The Hour Of Bewilderbeast is no ordinary album, Experimental and occasionally schizophrenic in its song composition, it is charming, beguiling, lo-fi, folk-psychedelic slash indie musings at its best. The Hour of Bewilderbeast appeared on several year-end lists. Pitchfork ranked the album at number 18 on its list of the top 20 albums of 2000. [19] NME ranked the album at number 4 on its list of the 50 best albums of 2000. [20] In addition, the album received the 2000 Mercury Prize, a prize Gough was favoured to win. When Gough received the prize, he tossed the prize money on the ground and said: "I always assumed I was never going to win because good things don't happen to good people normally." [21] Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough) – vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drum machine, tambourine, handclaps, whistling, slide guitar, harmonica, Wurlitzer electric piano, lead keyboards, organ solo, drum machine organs, percussion, crash cymbal, vibraphone, xylophone, harp, string arrangement, sound effects

a b Browne, David (23 October 2000). "The Hour of Bewilderbeast". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 13 July 2019 . Retrieved 9 February 2015. But what I like most about Badly Drawn Boy is that he seems to treat normality or ordinariness as the construction it is, not by necessarily challenging it in an open way, but by just being who he is, which is, I suppose, about as authentic as you can get. For my sins, I listened to Elliott Smith’s 2000 LP, Figure 8, to get some perspective on this. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, but it did cement the point in my mind. Smith’s tragedy is his unrequited crush on convention, which you can hear in the song structures and the lyrics. Smith always seems to be buying into an ethos he’s not entirely equipped to live with. Where Gough wins through is in his ability to recognize the fallacy of convention, and to dare to flaunt it, but not by wanton provocation.The Gallaghers' fourth album was their first on their own Big Brother label included Go Let It Out, Sunday Morning Call and Who Feels Love?