HE'S been pretty quiet for the past couple of years but now Badly Drawn Boy AKA Damon Gough is back on the road and headed for Ireland next week.
The be-hatted Bolton troubadour will kick off his latest tour at The Limelight 2 in Belfast on Tuesday, followed by dates in Dublin, Limerick and Cork.
Having endured a turbulent time following the end of his marriage, Gough has been laying low of late: his last album was 2012's soundtrack LP Being Flynn and it took an anniversary tour celebrating 15 years of his 2000 Mercury Prize-winning debut The Hour of The Bewilderbeast to get him back on stage again.
Busy "putting my life back together" for the past three years, the infamously erratic singer-songwriter – who developed a reputation for onstage 'meltdowns' – has recently been working on a new record.
However, it seems fans shouldn't expect the Badly Drawn Boy version of the classic 'break-up album' a la Dylan's Blood on The Tracks or Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.
"Losing a relationship is one of the hardest things you can go through, but everyone needs to move on," explained Gough in a recent interview with the Bournemouth Echo.
"For me, especially as I write personally, it's very difficult, and for a while, I just didn’t know what to write.
"The climate as it is, with more and more reality TV, everybody giving everything of themselves, that's what's expected – but I won't be down about it."
:: Tickets on sale now via Ticketmaster outlets.