Over the past four years, fans have learnt to expect the unexpected from Damon Gough; even so, the first of his two Meltdown shows opens with an incalculable surprise. He walks on stage, picks up an acoustic guitar and plays a song. All the way through. Then he plays another, and another. Where is the fumbling and tumbling Badly Drawn Boy, the would-be comedian spilling nonsensical anecdotes and self-deprecating gags? Who is this cautious, reticent impostor?
Gough, it seems, has taken past reviews to heart. Hunched up in a scruffy jacket and jeans, woolly hat pulled low over his eyes, he is sober, sombre and seemingly petrified. That he is alone - a tiny figure hemmed in by guitars, keyboards and two pianos - adds to his air of nervous vulnerability. His decision to open with two new songs, one laced with unusual bitterness, compounds his unease. An unsettling iciness descends over the evening and proves slow to thaw.
This is partly because the audience are curiously listless; but it's largely because Gough's show, although wonderful, isn't suited to a large, impersonal venue. He plays a set of such extraordinary intimacy, we could be watching him from a seat at the corner of his bed.
Songs still being fleshed out in the studio melt into tracks from The Hour of Bewilderbeast, the About a Boy soundtrack and the early EPs, each sounding equally fresh, immediate and heartfelt. As he gently plucks an acoustic guitar and draws lithe, lustrous melodies from a grand piano, Gough reminds us that there is a strikingly elegant musician beneath that bumbling exterior; his renditions of The Shining, About a Boy and Silent Sigh radiate a fluid, pellucid beauty.
Clowning hasn't been excised from his show completely, however. During the 10-minute riff on File Me Away, Gough imitates a broken record, repeating the first three words from Stand By Me until he is tapped on the back by his roadie, whom he promptly serenades before delivering a handful of roses to a girl in the front row.
Tonight, his daft little dances and rock-star poses no longer feel contrived; comedy splashes from the songs without drowning them. You get the feeling that Gough misses the ingenuous performer he once was, the boy who could get away with anything. He shouldn't: the Gough at this raw, thoughtful show is just as endearing and infinitely more affecting.
