This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Back in 2000 when he put out his shambling debut masterpiece The Hour of Bewilderbeast, Damon Gough’s music was in keeping with his musical alter-ego Badly Drawn Boy: Fuzzy, unfocused, playful and endearingly childish.
Since then, however, he has won The Mercury Prize. He did the soundtrack for the Hugh Grant romantic comedy About A Boy. He became a father. In short, he grew up. And that newfound maturity is reflected in his sort-of sophomore album Have You Fed the Fish?
More focused and commercial than his previous work, these 15 songs — many recorded in L.A. with the likes of Jon Brion, Tom Rothrock and various Beck sidemen — find the Boy reining in his post-psychedelic eclecticism in favour of tighter, brighter post-Beatles pop soundcraft. Of course, it’s all relative. Even a restrained Gough is freakier than your typical popster, as oddball, cinematic instrumentals like Coming in to Land and introspective folk-pop confessionals like How? establish.
And few could turn an erotic dream about a popstar into a romantic ode as deftly he does on the pure pop perfection of I Was Wrong / You Were Right: “I just had a dream the other night … / Madonna lived next door / I think she took a shine to me / But I had to turn her down because I was still in love with you,” Gough croons with fragile sincerity as the strings swell. “I’m turning Madonna down. I’m calling it my best move.” Atta Boy.
