After the Britpop bubble burst in the late ’90s, the UK music press found an unlikely new saviour in the form of Damon Gough, the scruffy, self-effacing, perma-toqued singer better known as Badly Drawn Boy. Born in 1969 in Manchester, Gough started out making quirky DIY recordings in the mid-’90s, and his burgeoning underground renown landed him a spot among Thom Yorke and Richard Ashcroft on Psyence Fiction, the 1998 album from James Lavelle’s all-star electronic project UNKLE. But Gough’s full-length debut as Badly Drawn Boy, 2000’s The Hour of Bewilderbeast, recast this lo-fi eccentric as an art-pop visionary—part Nick Drakean folk diarist, part Nilsson-like piano prankster, part Beatles-esque sound collagist. After that record won him the Mercury Prize in the UK, Gough maintained his lofty cruising altitude with 2002’s platinum-selling soundtrack to About a Boy, which brought the influence of ’60s sunshine pop and soul to the fore. Gough continued on his steady soft-rockin’ course through the 2000s, before addictions and health issues sidelined him for much of the next decade. But in 2020, a freshly sober Gough resurfaced with his first proper record in 10 years, Banana Skin Shoes, sounding thoroughly re-energized on the album’s discofied delight “Is This a Dream?”