t truly saddens my heart whenever there’s a major artistic letdown on the loose. It truly just destroys me inside. I imagine it could be kind of like having a kid. You know, the type who are just so fucking smart — they make a killing on the standardized tests, have unprecedented wit and depth to themselves, and are just five heads above everyone else. Of course, they figure out how smart they are, and before you know it, they’re not doing anything, and you find him flunking out and begging you for cash, ‘cause their janitorial job isn’t getting them anywhere.

Now imagine for a moment your son is Damon Gough, better known as Badly Drawn Boy. Imagine you are achingly familiar with his past accomplishments, and when he comes up short, you yearn for what he has done — and wonder why he can’t do it again. Gough’s latest, and his second album proper, Have You Fed The Fish?, is just this: it barely scrapes the dizzying heights of his earlier work, and while it’s a letdown, you see those flashes of brilliance. And perhaps knowing it’s still there makes it all the worse.

“Sometimes you’ve got to rewind / to go forward” he croons on the title track, but when Gough’s heartbroken voice is caught up in the swirl of keyboards and MOR—radio guitar, you want to believe him, but you just can’t. There is not one track on this album that comes close to matching the brooding, raw, and stunningly eclectic debut, The Hour of Bewilderbeast, and once this guy’s material gets the Tom Rothrock gloss—over (see Elliott Smith’s Figure 8 or Gough’s last album, the About A Boy soundtrack), it sure isn’t coming back.

Ever since the single off About A Boy, “Silent Sigh,” I starting having doubts about Gough. It wasn’t “Everybody’s Stalking” or “Pissing in the Wind,” it was “come see what we all talk about / people moving to the moon.” Listen to his earlier material: from his early EPs, he was a bruised, lo—fi singer—songwriter who wrote haunting, sparse folk come—ons like “I Love You All,” and “It Came From The Ground.” This was not light stuff. And reader, I honestly miss those dark, sinister days. Here was a man willing to bare his innermost, murkiest secrets, and even on singles like “Another Pearl,” there was substance beneath the surface. Thick, darting drums, reverberating organ tones, and nice, Andy Votel—influenced clicks and beeps.

But that’s not to say that his lighter tunes didn’t do much. Damon Gough is a gifted songwriter, someone who can consistently create life—affirming pop harmonies, and this album is chock full of them. On “All Possibilities,” a charming, orchestral disco—lite number, the listener is lifted away in a gorgeous horns and a breezy vocal hook. Even on the opener, “Coming Into Land,” where we are started with a pointless skit, the song quickly changes into a quirky, syrupy minute—long instrumental with flowing guitar, thumping bass, and the increasingly ubiquitous Joey Waronker laying down fun percussion. It’s possible to have a good time with Badly Drawn Boy.

I’m not sure what I can say, though, about too much of this record. Did Gough suddenly get confident enough to think he can introduce piano hooks a five year old would dig, or did the studio lay down the Rock (Roth, that is) on him, and say ‘he’s producing, so tough shit’? Because the mixing and production on this record sicken me. Nearly every track is stripped of the demo–-like qualities that made Bewilderbeast so endearing, and juiced with saccharine strings and lameduck guitar pushed up front. Because of this, often times, Gough’s raw emotion is swept away, most notably on “You Were Right.” While the song seems fairly generic most of the time, at the one moment all instrumentation is stripped, “and the night Kurt Cobain died / and the night John Lennon died / I still stayed home / to watch the news with everyone,” becomes a bittersweet lyric that truly conveys Gough’s deep melancholia. That is, until those generic studio strings sweep back in and carry the song off into Genericland.

But the disappointments just keep on coming. What the hell is 70s funk doing on here (“The Further I Slide”)? More importantly, why is he doing what a studio head thinks is bluegrass (“Tickets to What You Need”)? When Gough says “what’s wrong with me-e-e-e-e?” it’s supposed to be endearing, but it’s just flat out annoying. And there are times on this record you do wonder, what’s wrong with him. Who in their right mind would ever dare to say “you’ve got to give me two days / and woman I’ll make you a girl” (besides R. Kelly)?

There are moments on this record, however, where you just drop all pretenses, and remember what a gifted son Gough is. On the album’s centerpiece “How,” the song shifts back and forth from a waltz to upbeat rocker that (this isn’t a bad thing) sounds kind of like Ben Folds Five on a good day. “How can I find time / to be with you / again,” he weeps over string pluckings and a drum thump, but suddenly, the song flies away into a trumpeting chorus, with a staccato electric guitar whisking you away, far far away from Planet Fish.

Oh well. The prodigal son has come up short. I suppose there’s not too much you can say when this happens to him, but when it does, there is the understanding between the two of you that your son will, and can, do better. Let’s hope he takes his old successes and builds on them next time, rather than deflating them.