Badly Drawn Boy - It’s What I’m Thinking Part 1: Photographing Snowflakes

Here, Badly Drawn Boy releases the first album of a trilogy, that’s also the seventh of his career, and (un)intentionally delivers the perfect soundtrack for cold autumn nights. With the help of many artists from the North West of England - such as Europium Alluminate, Denis Jones and El Diablo’s Social Club - he doesn’t reinvent pop music with ‘It’s What I’m Thinking Part 1: Photographing Snowflakes’, but creates something delightfully simple yet figured.

Opener ‘In Safe Hands’ sounds atmospheric and cold, with minimalistic melodies, but that’s not the mood of the whole album. Follow up ‘The Order Of Things’ is almost as quiet, but on the album’s first single, ‘Too Many Miracles’, at last Damon Gough aka Badly Drawn Boy shows off his unmistakable velvety voice and songwriter qualities. It’s amazing how he manages to turn the simplest vocals into something so pleasant and charming, just with the help of some timeless orchestral arrangements and little gimmicks like bells and piano tinkling.

Whilst ‘What Tomorrow Brings’, a warm and graceful ballad, ‘You Lied’, a breathy lament, and ‘It’s What I’m Thinking’, which sounds like a narrated story wrapped into spherical sounds, represent the melancholy and quiet part of the album, ‘I Saw You Walk Away’ is a more up-tempo track (especially in Badly Drawn Boy relations).

But Gough’s intentions aren’t to make danceable songs, even though ‘This Electric’ experiments with mellow beats. He creates wonderful melodies packed into blurry strings, strumming pianos and guitars, that deliver stories about way more than snowflakes and love.

Closing track ‘This Beautiful Idea’ sums up the album’s mood quite nicely. It’s reserved, Gough’s voice never too much in the fore - and after early highlight ‘Too Many Miracles’, nothing can quite live up to the brilliance and optimism of that one song. It sure is a great soundtrack for said cold autumn nights, but all those wonderful, almost hidden melodies definitely deserve more attention and decoration.