A Review of Dougal Irvine’s Acoustic Overtures
Dougal Irvine is an actor and writer for musical theatre. He is the lyricist for Stratford East’s Britain’s Got Bhangra! and his first musical Departure Lounge won the MTM Award for Best Musical and was by all accounts a good show. To add to his continuing successes he has just released an album of his own material, some from shows and some new. Ladies and gentlemen it gives me great pleasure to finally say “This week I are been mostly been listening to Dougal Irvine’s debut* album”
*I’m not sure what if an album made up of selections from various musicals and some originals, all sung by various musical theatre singers and Dougal himself really qualifies as, is it a debut for all the composer or songs or what? But I prattle on.
I had not heard an awful lot of Dougal’s (Mr Irvine’s) output before this week. I had heard a couple of songs from Departure Lounge on the MusicalTalk podcast roundup of the Edinburgh Fringe festival a couple of years ago, when it was making a big splash up there. I believe that one of the songs was about Spain as it had a wink to the likely line in My Fair Lady (more on this later) and another in which one of the characters asked if a statement had made him “sound like a twat?”. It was nice and it was on acoustic guitar. One or more of the actors sang with a trumped up Essex-y accent which I always feel is a lazy way so sing and still sound manly. So apart from that, and a rap that Dougal performed with his musical superviser and his producer (more on this later) I had not heard much, although what I had heard was good stuff.
If you would like to understand the musical content of the songs and you, like me, downloaded the song from iTunes rather than buying a hard CD, then check this out. I was kindly sent it by Dougal’s people.
Anyhoo, here are the songs and guest artistes:
- Mr Musical – Amy Pemberton who currently in Rock Of Ages.
- Clean Cut Rapper – Dougal Irvine.
- Two Faces – Ashleigh Gray.
- Silence And The Rain – Cassie McIvor and Daniel Boys.
- The Morning After You Do It – Ross Hunter who as I write this is playing Warner in Legally Blonde.
- Megan’s Hero – Lauren Samuels of Television and We Will Rock You.
- Tir Na N’og – Samantha Barks and Dougal Irvine who both give a stella performance.
- Simple – Michael Jibson who doesn’t even have the common decent to make his tweets public so whatever, right?
- Do You Want A Baby Baby? – Julie Atherton who is one class act I have to say.
- Mermaids – Annalene Beechey and Rebecca Lock. Annalene is sleeping to the producer, I’ve heard.
- We Need Love – Sarah Earnshaw, Sarah Lark, Stuart Matthew Price and George Ure, who is not above doing panto in Perth.
- Song For Friends – Dougal Irvine
And here’s what I think of them, in order of terriblity
No, that’s not going to happen. They are all good and I don’t feel like anyone (especially me) can give verdicts of any quality about music. What I can do is to write about a handful of the songs that I feel define some of what makes Dougal’s music something to cherish and he someone to look out for in the future. If you are unsure about buying the album just buy a couple of these for 79p a pop (roughly the same price as a grab bag of Cool/Original Doritos) as they are for my money the songs that you need to hear to “get” Dougal.
Mr Musical
The first is the opening song, Mr Musical, which one has to assume was always written to be the opening to this album. It is probably the most definitive song on that album. By that I mean that it has the most of, and as much of, what makes the album good inside its 2 minutes 49 seconds. Musically its like nothing else you are going to hear from any other musical theatre composer’s outing this year. Its funky. It has wah-wah rhythm guitar, muted acoustics (more of this later), harmonics, Rhodes pianos (or some kind of flange**) and ends on a unresolved broken seventh.
Its performed by Mrs Pemberton (who at the time of writing doesn’t seem to have a twitter account) with so much class that it makes the wordy smugness and near-fatal cheesiness (that must fall only on Dougal himself) dissipate, leaving us with a proper song. The Buena Vista Social Club “Dun-da-na-na” from the boys at the end are also necessary cheese-cutting mechanism, and a prelude to the silliness that is to come.
It tells you that whatever happens from here on in, you are not laughing alone.
Its the perfect introduction into the composer-lyricist’s world. Sure the self-referential insider-y-ness of quoting the titles of as many musicals as you can in a song endows the songe with a lack of lyrical cohesion but hey, shut up.
Clean Cut Rapper
For my money this is the best song on the album, it might very well have the finest chorus on the album but good choruses are cheap and easy for Dougal. The verse lyrics are what this song really throws at you. Conversational and human, funny and real, and the composer performs them himself brilliantly.
Make this the second song you listen to (if you are buying them individually) and you should be sold on the whole album. The production values on this song are something you are just not going to hear on any other musical theatre album.
Tir Na N’og
Possibly the most precious performance on the album, its a pretty little story in a song and it is so very delicately arranged and produced. This is one of the songs that will make it onto your “play often” playlist Its not a song written by that cheeky Dougal, its more like a Mr Irvine piece. If I said this song was a pearl would you get what I meant?
Mermaids
I think that its important that you listen to Mermaids, which is sung by Annalene Beechey and Rebecca Lock. I listen to it and wonder what is happening to these girls. The song gathers a lyrical power that is descriptive and potent and abstract and rich. Its the only song on the album that meanders in that undecided way that the likes of Sondheim manages in his Pacific Overtures. Its lovely, and while its not my favourite I include it in my definitive list for the album because of its contrast. Also the voices and cello do something to me and I don’t suppose they fail to do something to you too. Well done ladies.
Song For Friends
Dougal finishes his album with a big shout out to all his friends, old and new, and his lady wife. Its a campfire song. Its very warming. Don’t worry if you feel you are not invited to listen in though, as Dougal assures us that it is not voyeuristic to listen in on this personal gift of affection because we, that’s right, those who bought the album are also his friends. Yes folk don’t come cheaper than that Dougal Irvine.
Just kidding.
Only a person as nice as Dougal Irvine would write a song like Songs For Friends at all. Nice one… mate (I type sheepishly).
What does Sell it! mean?
I say sell it because to raise the funds to create this album Dougal Irvine and his musical supervisor Pete White? and producer Simon Grieff did a rap, and no Dad, I’m not spelling that with a silent “c”. They used a crowd sourcing website that helps people who need funding find people who want to find new projects. Naturally this performance took them far and beyond their target.
Wrap Up
There are two things I love about Dougal Irvine that you do not get enough of in Musical Theatre.
One of those things is that Dougal’s songs are fun. Fun is not the same as funny, although they are that. Fun is his attitude to songs, their instrumentation, their lyrical invention and for what purpose he is using those songs. Fun means joyful and silly and British and ridiculous and, well, this is an album full of fun songs.
The other thing that makes Dougal and his album good in general is that he has written his songs on an acoustic guitar. Most musical theatre composers write at the piano. Lets put that number up at about 95%.
Writing from guitar means that you have a different way of constructing chords and a totally different attitude towards rhythm. Guitarists don’t tend to accompany the singer in the voicing of their chords for example. Guitarists also develop a different ear for timbre than pianists as they have more voicing options at their disposal. Wider chords, harmonics and all of the different pedals out their mean that the guitar is a far more dynamic instrument than the piano in its vocal shading.
Guitarists also learn pop music when they start to learn guitar. The first thing a budding guitar toddler will learn is How Many Roads? and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The first song I could play on the piano was God Save the Queen or something rotten like that. I suppose Dougal and his kind are predisposed to write a new musical theatre. I hope so, he certainly writes with heart.
Go listen to Dougal Irvine’s Acoustic Overtures.
Ithankyou.
**Love that word
PS. Penis.
After writing this blog, Dougal’s people were nice enough to send me a pdf of the CD that I might get to back a little into what I was missing. I asked if I could post it up on my blog for all to see and they said that would be fine. So here you go Ratfans, in pdf form for those on a desktop, and hosted for those on mobiles.
