Badly Drawn Boy (ArtistDirect)

Britpop is dead. Long live Britpop. One week last month the Billboard Top 100 singles chart lacked a single Brit for the first time since JFK was President. So be original and get this charming pocket encyclopedia of pop by a one-man English band (real name: Damon Gough). The 16 original songs that make up the soundtrack of the new Hugh Grant comedy About A Boy reach into the dusty stacks of the pop library. The result is sweet, Burt Bacharach-style compositions with playful tweaks (one tune sounds like electronica played by a marching band). On the centerpiece, "Silent Sigh," a jazz-pop piano jam, Gough's sound is like a hip bowling shirt: Is it the latest thing or decades old? This Boy is so slick, his old man would lend him the car keys.

Bottom Line: Let's hear it for the Boy