It's What I'm Thinking (Part 1 - Photographing Snowflakes): by Badly Drawn Boy

Synopsis

The first part in a trilogy called It's What I'm Thinking - "It's just a wry comment on the fact that that's all I'm doing, just writing the songs, and within the songs is what I'm thinking" - and the subheading of the first album is Photographing Snowflakes. "I was having a drink one night with some friends and someone said 'What do you think is the hardest job ever?'" explains Damon Gough (AKA: Badly Drawn Boy), "and to me it's got to be photographing snowflakes. It's impossible. People do it but I've no idea how they do it."

It's also an analogy for what Gough wants to achieve with this trilogy, grabbing those moments or songs that come from nowhere and capturing the moment. Photographing snowflakes. Through the falling snowflakes of the first album the picture that emerges of Badly Drawn Boy coming to terms with a new maturity - "Throw me to the lions, make me a man" he sings on The Order Of Things, and "All I ask is you treat me like a man" on You Lied - and a period of reflection and reevaluation. "Well for a while I thought it was amazing, and I still think you're the one" he explains on A Pure Accident, "I know you will forgive me, for the things that I've done wrong, I'm sorry I never liked your favourite song."

Being back on his own label, and working closer again with longtime collaborator 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 Having originally made his name on Twisted Nerve, the label he founded in the late 90s with Votel, there feels a certain synchronicity with Gough, having spent much of the decade on major labels, being back on his own label. "I don't want to slag off major labels," he stresses, but with the industry going through a period of flux, "things have almost by default come back to my way of thinking."


Track Listing

Disc One:
1 In Safe Hands
2 The Order of Things
3 Too Many Miracles
4 What Tomorrow Brings
5 I Saw You Walk Away
6 It's What I'm Thinking
7 You Lied
8 A Pure Accident
9 This Electric
10 This Beautiful Idea

Disc Two:
1 It's What He's Thinking (Oxidising Hexagons Silver Iodide - Album Re-Dux / Sound Collage by Andy Votel)