The Dø – A Mouthful

The Dø - A Mouthful

The Dø is the French/Finnish team of Dan Levy and Olivia Merilahti, who met while scoring French movies. When this album, A Mouthful, was released in France as far back as 2008 it topped the French charts on its release, which all in all is not bad considering it was a debut album (how many bands can say their debut topped the in their respective country? Providing, of course, it is as big as England or France…). The band has decided to give it a go at the English market once more, after having rereleased 2007 single ‘On My Shoulders’ earlier this year.

The band is not afraid to give it the good old college try as far as experimentation is concerned, with all the good and bad things that go with that. On the first song we hear Merilahti give a cue for a group of children to start singing that they are “not afraid of you adults”, while in the background we hear drums and flutes and other instruments you might not be able to place among the most frequently used. It is the first signal of what is to come really, though in the upcoming songs the band first takes it down a notch both in pace and experimentation.

‘At Last’ is not the most daring song, folky perhaps a tad, with Merilahti singing dreamily about how happy she is with her love, though not giving the details as she doesn’t want to “make it harder on you girls”. If you find all this a tad too sweet, fear not, the rest of the album is not about true romance, nor really is this song, the last lines betraying she gave her heart away on a whim and gave up all for a boy she just met. That, though, is something jealous girls don’t see when two lovers are parading hand in hand. Sometimes jealousy is a rather premature emotion.

Single ‘On My Shoulders’ continues the theme in a song rightfully the single. The drums give a continues mid-paced beat, which makes the song rather catchy. It’s easy to understand why this song has been remixed. ‘Song for Lovers’ is an acoustic affaire, which seems to be a lamentation on how young, innocent people are corrupted by love, while ‘The Bridge is Broken’ opens with the lines: “Boy you got nerve to come along”, which really gives away the theme of the song, doesn’t it? Except for the last lines, which negate the rest of the song, something they do slyly.

Merilahti has a rather peculiar voice. It is not beautiful in a vocalist sense perhaps, not in a diva sense anyway. But her raspy voice is pitch-perfect for some of the songs, sometimes sounding hopeless, sometimes naive and dreamy, sometimes a bit down and pathetic. Especially some of the songs of the first half are greatly helped by this quality, as the accompanying music sometimes is just a bit too minimalistic perhaps.

So after having made some songs arguably build around the voice of Merilahti, it is now time to get creative again apparently. The song ‘Unisassi Laulelet’ seems to have some African origins in there, which is nice enough, though apparently the language is Finnish. ‘Tammie’ has some catchy drums, with in the end some nice anxious vocals. The real downwards descent is set in with ‘Queen Dot Kong’, in which the band takes on hip-hop, rather misplaced it seems on this album. Though the songs after are moody and atmospheric, more so than on the first half of the album, they do not necessarily draw you back as listener. With fifteen songs it might also be straining it a bit, almost making one miss ‘Travel Light’, which has a rough edge to it with a more dreamy middle part.

A Mouthful by The Dø has quite a bit on it, but also quite a bit that isn’t really that good. With fifteen songs they ask perhaps too much of the listener, especially when it all starts easy on the ears with nice songs with those artistic vocals, but then changes direction to songs more demanding. To start that part of the album they come with a sort of hip-hop song that is quite unsettling, and after that it might not be too easy to get into the album again. Yet quite a few songs, especially those up front, are a treat, with the vocals adding different emotions to it while being suitably accompanied by Dan Levy‘s instrumentation. Lyrically it is nice to see them start off one way to succumb to another emotion at the end. It is not that they have to do away will all experimentation – some of the songs that do not have that perhaps could use it – it is that they might not want to concentrate it in such a way that at one point they change musical direction every song after first having treated the listener to a more cohesive first part. Now it is perhaps a rather abruptly mixed bag.

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