About A Boy [Soundtrack]
- Badly Drawn Boy
- Band Name: Badly Drawn Boy
- Record Label: Artist Direct / XL Recordings
- Release Date: Apr 23, 2002
- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
90With About a Boy, Badly Drawn boy has grown up.
-
It's difficult to imagine how Badly Drawn Boy could've improved on The Hour of Bewilderbeast any better than this astonishing work.
-
90It's an album that feels like a watershed somehow, a significant step onwards.
-
90A gorgeous, (let me say it again) gorgeous album that totally stands on its own.... About a Boy is one of the best albums of the year.
-
A mix of songs and themes balancing obsessive craft with flippant style. [3 May 2002, p.89]
-
Ambition, imagination, charm and grace - by any measure, 'About A Boy' hits the heights.
-
A collection of stylistically diverse tunes that is cohesive and refreshing. [Jul 2002, p.76]
-
80Badly Drawn Boy pulls off the job with panache, tipping his hat to Nick Drake, Burt Bacharach and acoustic-era Bob Dylan. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.103]
-
Somewhere within the radio-friendly, xylophone-banging tracks, Badly Drawn Boy finds space for artistic experimentation and growth.
-
80A vibe of maverick playfulness married to fabulous tunes. [Apr 2002, p.106]
-
About a Boy is that rarest of bewildering beasties, the soundtrack that stands by itself.
-
75The songs lack the emotional depth of Bewilderbeast, but the jaunty folk-pop is just so much fun.
-
70It's not all pleasant.... However, there are some total gems, as you'd expect.
-
70The seemingly effortless confidence displayed throughout is startling. [Apr 2002, p.108]
-
70The songs on About a Boy are all exactly what we've come to expect from Gough, and the disc's lack of cohesion is its only real failing.
-
If About A Boy doesn't quite have the anything-can-happen vibe of Bewilderbeast, it still reveals a remarkably gifted artist.
-
60Light and airy, pretty in parts, but devoid of muscle, grit or originality. [May 2002, p.96]
-
The movie-cue instrumentals, underdeveloped sketches and an incongruous fake cop-show theme prevent About a Boy from fully holding together as an album, but at the core of this soundtrack are some elegant, fully realized songs.
-
49Every card Gough plays is painfully transparent from the first time you play the disc. It's elementary stuff. It sounds manufactured, refined, cosmetic and sterile; in a word, silicone, like a pair of Badly Sculpted Breast Implants.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 13 out of 13
-
Mixed: 0 out of 13
-
Negative: 0 out of 13
-
7
-
matta9
-
JaredSS9