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...according to our Brian on Thu 30 Sep, 2010.
Right. That beardy Mancunian tramp is back in our lives and we should be grateful. He makes the majority of us look like Christian Bale (though Brett already does - wooooh! Hold it ladies!), even after we've been on a tequila & kebab marathon, shat ourselves & woken up face-down in the gutter afterwards. No longer blatantly ripping off Elliot Smith or Brucie bonus (well you can't fake that kind of despair and he'd look an even bigger twat in a cut-off t-shirt) but I'm actually not entirely sure WHAT he's actually doing now. We don't wanna open the deluxe CD package, it looks too posh. So we're having a listen to the more than moderately interesting "collage" of the album his old mucker Andy Votel has constructed. It's the only "promo" thing we've got to go on. And it sounds just like an old Twisted Nerve/Finders Keepers thing really. Loads of mad old folk/cinematic/kitsch/psychedelic twists stitching the skeletal fundamentals of his new album back together to resemble some woozy aural Frankenstein's monster after a few mushie brews. It really works rather well, though I bet the actual primary album is a bit Kenny Loggins - his last few have been far too MOR for my tastes. So the Elton John of Pavement Pizza Towers has been shambling around in that fucking smelly hat for over a decade now! But, ya know, it's kinda reassuring to have him back! Although given that this is mooted as the first of a trilogy I may be soon eating my words....
2CD version features a bonus disc called “It’s What He’s Thinking”. This is basically one piece of music whereby Andy Votel has deconstructed the original album and pieced it all back together again in his own inimitable style with lots of loops, re-editing and so on to make it into something brand new.
"He's the Chorlton-cum-Springsteen anti-superstar" - Paul Morley
Has it really been a decade?
It feels a lot longer.
It feels like yesterday.
It was June 2000 when the Mercury-winning, seminal The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, announced the arrival of the badly drawn genius of Damon Gough. It's been a curious, wonderful, inimitable, unpredictable decade of major prizes and minor incidents, all possibilities and pissing in the wind, at the end of which we find Gough starting the new decade as he did the last… at a creative peak, and back on his own label.
"It feels like a new beginning in a lot of ways," nods a refreshed and revitalised Gough over a pint in a Manchester beer garden, "it definitely feels like I'm on a roll."
Penning the soundtrack to last year’s Caroline Aherne film The Fattest Man in Britain sparked a period of unprecedented creativity for Gough, resulting in a wealth of great new songs. Invigorated and inspired by the approach of artists like mid-period Bob Dylan or Neil Young, who would go into the studio to record an album when the songs were flowing, rather than when the music industry cycle dictated to them, Gough decided the best way to capture this surge, and give the songs the exposure they deserved was to release a trilogy of albums. "I've got such a wealth of ideas I want to work on," explains Gough. "and intrinsically, as a creative person, you don't want to switch off the flow of ideas, because that's what keeps you ticking."
Being back on his own label, One Last Fruit, and working closer again with Twisted Nerve's co-founder Andy Votel, has also reenergised Gough. "It feels like everything has reconnected to what I'm doing." Having originally made his name on Twisted Nerve there feels great for Gough to be back working on his own label, having spent much of the decade on major labels. "I don't want to slag off major labels," he stresses, but with major labels going through a period of flux, "things have almost by default come back to my way of thinking."
01. In Safe Hands 02. The Order of Things 03. Too Many Miracles 04. What Tomorrow Brings 05. I Saw You Walk Away
06. It’s What I’m Thinking 07. You Lied 08. A Pure Accident 09. This Electric 10. This Beautiful Idea
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