Badly Drawn Boy’s last effort, One Plus One Is One, was an intricate, beautiful piece of jazz-tinged folk, looking inward and downward. Quiet and introverted, it represented a peace sole-proprietor Damon Gough desperately needed at the time. But after this period spent “finding [him]self,” his songs begged for thrashing pianos and huge walls of sound. Lucky for us then, that Gough has decided to turn his view outward and upward, with Springsteen-esque mini rock operas encompassing the hard-to-grasp idea of growing up British. Though still personal, the sound is bigger and fuller, from the Burt Bacharach orchestration on “Nothing’s Gonna Change Your Mind” and “Long Way Round” to the ’70s-musical feel of “Welcome To The Overground.” Moving ever farther away from the kitchen-sink sound that made him the critic’s darling with The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, this is Gough’s most succinct album to date—fluid, eloquent and timeless.