Beneath that trademark tea cosy, the woolly thinking about fame and celebrity has gone. After his head-turning Los Angeles experiences making the About A Boy soundtrack and over-stretched Have You Fed The Fish? in quick succession, Badly Drawn Boy's Damon Gough has re-activated the charmed template of his DIY debut The Hour Of Bewilderbeast.

The clue lies not only in that no-trimmings album title but in the opening lyric: "Back to being who I was before". Later he sings of a life turned upside down, "but then maybe it's just been put back the right way around".

Indeed it has, with Gough recording once more at his favourite Moulin Rouge studios in Stockport, comfortably near his Chorlton home. Gough is disarmingly positive and full of bonhomie, even performing with a children's chorus (one act of generosity too far!) and employing the kind of drumming usually heard at a school prom on the closing English spiritual Holy Grail.

This time the McCartney in him wins out over the Lennon.

Gough's protective shield of a woollen hat has been surpassed by Devendra Banhart, fellow member of the XL Recordings stable.

For his British TV debut on Later With Jools Holand, the hippie New Yorker and one-time homeless art student sat hunched inside a candle-lit tent, while his guitar gently slept.

Was this a prank? No, Banhart's stark music needs an intense, intimate, private setting. Rejoicing In The Hands, his second album, is a beauteous, folk-spun set of scuffed love songs, Marc Bolan singing Nick Drake reveries. File under cult record, the kind that Gough fashioned with The Hour Of Bewilderbeast.

Updated: 08:14 Thursday, June 24, 2004