Is There Nothing We Could Do? - Badly Drawn Boy

(Big Life)

Pedestrian versifier Badly Drawn Boy – aka Manchester's Damon Gough – has long been a daft-hatted poster boy for fans of ambling pop psalms and prosaic surveillance.

This is his second soundtrack endeavour – the first being 2002's About a Boy – and it offers a fittingly droll aural backdrop to the forthcoming Timothy Spall parody, The Fattest Man in Britain.

Gough’s characteristic melodic economy and lyrical understatement prevail – conducted, as ever, via wry electronics, sparse piano and acoustic guitar – but the overall outcome, (on record at least), serves to remind that there’s a fine line between jubilantly humdrum and plain unremarkable.