Until I saw Damon Gough, the singer-songwriter better known as Badly Drawn Boy, in concert, it never occurred to me that the audience might be there for the performer's amusement rather than the other way around. At one point, Gough started handing out roses to women in the front row while he serenaded them freestyle. I couldn't help thinking of Jonathan Richman when he gave a flower to a guy and sang, "I'm not bisexual/but I appreciate the male population."

Badly Drawn Boy Damon Gough at Club Quattro Oct. 2.

During most of his two hour-plus show Oct. 2 at Club Quattro, Gough seemed more interested in his cigarettes and bottle of Jack Daniels than his songs, but he was nevertheless attentive to the audience's expectations, even if he wasn't exactly meeting them. At first I thought the Mercury Prize that his debut album, "The Hour of Bewilderbeast," won a few weeks ago had gone to his head, and that he was exploiting the prerogatives of instant stardom. After stumbling onstage, fag hanging out of his mouth, fist pumping the air, he said "How you feelin' Tokyo? We're going to rock your socks off tonight." It was difficult to tell whether or not he was being ironic -- or whether it really mattered if he was.

Others in the sold-out club might have seen him a year ago when he played a showcase at a dinky dive in Roppongi; or they may have been following his career since his homemade tunes were first picked up by the UNKLE house/techno collective. But all I knew about Gough was "Bewilderbeast," which is one of the most consistently beautiful albums I've heard in a long time, a record of simple songs about everyday pain and longing that aren't forced or coy, couched in melodies snatched from the ether.

My initial reaction could be blamed on the fact that I expected a Mancusian incarnation of Nick Drake and seemed to be getting an embodiment of the worst traits of Liam Gallagher, complete with sloppy sportswear, three-day stubble and trusty old ski cap. Then again, Liam, even at his most pissed, wouldn't have had the balls to make up songs on the spot the way Gough did. Mind you, they weren't good songs, but once the audience realized their expectations were worthless, they succumbed to Gough's artless (in all senses of the word) concept of fun.

"Today's my birthday," he said, "the same as Sting's," a coincidence that might have impressed him at one time but didn't now. He showed off the toys he'd bought himself and sang an impromptu ode to one of them: "O Godzilla/He lights up in such a fascinating way."

He wouldn't admit how old he was ("Is it so obvious I'm not 19 any more?") but I'm sure he's older than the press thinks he is, which is pretty young. During the spoken introduction to the only cover song he did all night, Gough claimed to have been "born in a mine shaft in America," where he was visited by angels and turned into "the God of music." At the age of 14, he met a destitute man and wrote a song for him. "It's time for me to reclaim it." Since "Born in the USA" was released in 1984, that would make Gough 30.

The band kicked hard and Gough changed only one line ("I'm a short, fat daddy from the USA"). He maintained the desolate vocal style that makes his own songs so haunting in spots, but in the end it was an honest approximation of a song he probably had no right to perform in front of a paying audience.

Which was exactly the point. Birthday or no birthday, Gough wasn't going to let the usual concert obligations get in the way of his own personal enjoyment. "I apologize for messing around," he said, fiddling with his guitar without really tuning it, "but that's the way it goes. You learn to love it."

Why should he interrupt a good smoke just for a song? Such an attitude would explain his performing incapacities. Whether playing guitar or keyboards, Gough couldn't get through five measures without making a mistake. But it didn't faze him or his band, who were obviously used to it. And the miraculous thing was, the songs could take it.

The piano arpeggios that opened "Magic in the Air" were stuttery and sloppy, and they segued into a stilted vamp that wouldn't have sounded out of place in a high school production of "The Fantasticks," but once he started singing, the slight, singular melody came through and the audience was hooked.

Gough's songs are good because he doesn't work them to death. He'll take a familiar phrase, turn it just so, and in the process make it his own. The chorus to the hypnotic "Camping Next to Water" contains the deceptively simple lines: "There's no use in feeling/all the things I'm feeling/when there's no one here to feel with me." The way he spins the word "feel" around within the merry-go-round rhythm of the song stays with you.

Gough is not a craftsman like Aimee Mann or Ron Sexsmith. He's not fiercely protective of his songs, the way Elliott Smith is. He's a guy with a talent for tunes who knows how far he can go with that talent without breaking a sweat. He's not so much badly drawn as incompletely sketched, and he seems to want to stay that way.

By the time he got to "Pissing in the Wind," about two hours into the set, the audience was divided into those who were ready to call it a night, and those who'd been won over. "Pissing" would make a good theme song if Gough were the kind of artist who cared about such things. A gentle, rolling folk melody that hardens into solid rock, it lays out a personal manifesto.

"I chanced a foolish grin and dribbled on my chin," he sang, strumming his acoustic guitar with a ferocity that was either the Jack or the audience's tacit encouragement, or maybe both. "Just give me something, I'll take nothing."