“Do you think it matters when you were born?/Not really, it only matters that you can be proud of where you came from.” So begins Damon Gough’s fifth album and, oh dear no, I fear a concept coming on. And surely it can’t be…it is…the topic is, um, national pride. And given that his last offering, the deeply introspective One Plus One Is One, is now a tried and tested cure for insomnia, this does not bode well...but then we listened to it and it was brilliant and we had cake.
Sorry, just messing. Truth is, Born In The UK isn’t half as bad as it sounds on paper, but nor does it signify BDB’s transformation into a higher, godlike genius. That’s not for want of trying: he renounced a near-completed record before embarking on this one, which must have pleased his new major record company no end.
Damon’s quest to reach creative nirvana is aided by having Lemon Jelly’s Nick Franglen at the helm. The glorious ‘Without A Kiss’ includes a magnificent merging of two beats, possibly the nearest he’ll come to Soulwax territory. This is a reflection of the growing influences he’s come to incorporate; with the title track he triples his average tempo, ‘Welcome To The Overground’ sounds like the distant relation of a gospel song, and the closer ‘One Last Dance’ makes the album’s second reference to The Boss by namechecking ‘Thunder Road’.
It’s also nice to note that he’s stopped equating ‘artistic integrity’ with ‘lack of melody’, keeping enough hooks dotted around (‘Promises‘, ‘The Way Things Used To Be’) to acknowledge the fact that records are actually to be listened to, and not solely for the artist’s own cathartic purposes.
A few tracks inevitably get lost in the mix, but as a whole, let’s dismiss our initial prejudices: it’s the tea-cosy hatted one’s most consistently strong album since Mercury Prize winner The Hour Of Bewilderbeast.