Badly Drawn Boy Shines in Beguiling Appearance

With his wool skull cap, scraggly beard and black T-shirt bedecked with glitter graffiti, English singer-songwriter Damon Gough, a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy, could have been mistaken for any number of hipster patrons at Amoeba Music in Hollywood on Friday. But, in fact, he was the poser being watched, as part of the record store’s terrific free concert series.

The acclaimed singer, whose current album is the charming soundtrack to the film “About a Boy,” was beguiling, if a little unrehearsed. His hour-plus set began inauspiciously. For the opening number, Gough held up a portable DVD player that piped music as he sang along. The moment had its cheeky charm but, mercifully, that cheek didn’t bleed over into the rest of the set.

Gough, in fact, is a sharp-witted songwriter with an unerring ear for the dissonance between word and deed in romantic relationships. His fragile, whimsical material is rife with wordplay and lush, byzantine arrangements, but for this set, Gough had only his acoustic guitar, an electric keyboard and an accompanying guitarist to fill in all of those big spaces.

It worked more often than not. Gough’s tremulous, boyish voice was endearing enough to compensate for the deficiencies in his shaky, and frequently wayward, guitar parts. A little spit and polish wouldn’t have hurt, however.