nitially, what’s most striking about One Plus One Is One—and what some critics have mistaken for “sketchiness”—is how effortless the album sounds. The songs here, mostly love laments speckled with bits of whimsical wisdom, are the fruits of seeds strategically planted, nurtured over time, pruned when necessary, until their time was ripe. Yes, Damon Gough has a gentle green thumb, cultivating his songs the only way he knows how—over time. All of which makes One Plus One a veritable debutante ball of sad little songs. So say it with me: BDB isn’t sketchy. He’s organic.

Take “Easy Love”, a song that thrives on sparse and varied instrumentation, ranging from flute to what sounds like a match being lit to everyone’s best kindergarten pal, Mr. Triangle. The lyrics, indicative of the album as a whole, are simple observations invested with beguiling emotion courtesy of Gough’s earnest delivery. “Never had an easy love,” he sings, “Like the one I’m dreaming of / Find the hand that fits the glove / Of love”. In the hands of lesser songsmiths, such lines would inevitably sound like so much rot, but Gough has a peculiar charm about him that gradually disarms the jaded listener.

Subdued acoustic tracks like “This Is That New Song” and “Life Turned Upside Down” serve as the foundation of One Plus One. On the latter, a wicked midget-from-Twin-Peaks vocal distortion is applied to Gough’s voice, leaving him sounding more like he’s sucking down our words than singing out his own. The song’s theme? Life seems crazy sometimes, but in the end it’s the craziness that’s the best part. Not exactly groundbreaking, we grant you, but intellectualizing isn’t what Gough’s music is about.

Both the fortune cookie inspired “Year of the Rat” and lengthy “Holy Grail” employ the Stockport Music Project Children’s Choir, lending the tracks a timeless quality. After all, if you’ve got a bunch of spooky kids singing it, who’s going to argue? Other notables include “Another Devil Dies”, a faux lounge number replete with muted applause and tasteful yowling, and the title track, which in its buoyant vocal delivery and “peace, love and granola” message resembles much of John Lennon’s solo work.

Occasionally, no matter how much love and tenderness we give a seedling, it stubbornly grows askew, sprouts unsightly thorns, or refuses to rise to its potential, and things are no different in Gough’s garden. The two instrumental tracks here, “Stockport” and “Blossoms”, merely mark time, keeping listeners warm while they await the next proper track. “Stockport” sounds like an amalgamation of the Peanuts cartoon theme song and Britney Spears’ “Everytime”, while “Blossoms” could have been lifted off a mood disc at a Medieval Fair (not that I’d know—ahem!).

BDB strikes the mark with One Plus One. In a musical climate that increasingly devalues the skill of songwriting, you can find Gough with his elbows in the soil, steadfastly tending to his garden.