GIG REVIEWS

Badly Drawn Boy
@ The Foundry, Sheffield
13th October 2000
www.vanguard-online.co.uk

 BELIEVING Badly Drawn Boy to be the one new artist to have emerged from the current quagmire of British music who actually deserves the praise he has received, our expectations of his live show were high. Perhaps they were too high. The warm, homely sounds of his debut album, a hearkening back to almost forgotten childhood days somewhere in Manchester, certainly set a high standard, affirmed by his Mercury Music Prize earlier this year.

Perhaps, then, there was some sort of mistake. Perhaps we and several hundred other people had mistakenly turned up at the rehearsal session, handed over our tickets and been duped into thinking that this was the actual gig. What other explanation could there be for an artist who repeatedly screwed up his songs, starting some as many as four times before he got them right?

It must have all started to go wrong when Haven, the stunningly beautiful support band, walked onto the stage. Theirs were luscious, enigmatic songs delivered with such power and assurance you'd have thought they were the headliners. They were, quite simply, superb. And if they are not the number one band in Britain in the next year, something, somewhere, is very sadly wrong. There was no way Badly Drawn Boy could live up to this – was there?

When the Boy himself emerged, music's new Messiah, it became apparent that he had no intention of living up to any standard whatsoever. Instead, he spent an hour and a half amusing himself, declaring his undying love for the bouncer and the girls in the front row, telling the Radio One audience how he'd shagged Jo Whiley (the gig was, unfortunately, being broadcast live), and – if he felt like it, making half-hearted attempts to stumble through those things you might call songs. But only if he felt like it.

Last week we went to see a little known Leeds five piece called Bodixa play The Deep End. Like Haven, they performed their excellent and heartfelt set to only a handful of people, and so we are again forced to ask why such obvious talent remains in relative obscurity, when such arrogant, tea-cosy clad manifestations of mediocrity like Badly Drawn Boy can pack out the Foundry with half-hearted shite. Somewhere along the line, the rising stars of our flourishing music industry turned into this. Maybe we've been stuck in the past for too long – somehow we thought Mercury Music Prizes went to people who had talent.

Claire Lack and Drew Meakin