Wednesday, 18 June 2014

Douga "The Silent Well" (Do Make Merge)

Former Plank drummer Johnny Winbolt-Lewis formed Douga to sing the songs he wrote and after some changes in line up he's settled into a duo with John Waddington for "The Silent Well." Raul Carreno plays additional guitar on three songs and the tall man of many bands Dan Bridgewood-Hill (dbh) plays violin on all but the first two songs but didn't play at the album launch gig where they utilised two guitars, bass and drums. "Kids of Tomorrow" opens hopefully, a hard edged dream pop number. "Still Waters" rocks harder and has an intriguing chorus: "I'm not a yes man but I'm lying in the middle of the road, stopping traffic on a habit of mine, I'm not comatose." Then somehow Johnny makes a distorted guitar chime. "Albatross" has a Nick Drake wistfulness, and sad sunset violin strains whilst sampled voices chatter unintelligably. Dan's violin sounds more hoedown on "Accidents" which trots along a gurgling tunnel of psychedelic guitar swirl trapping distant rabbit receivers. "Beat Konductor" and "Blue is Nothing" reflect on depressive tendencies. "Chains" lays it on the line to corporate whores; "When will this be history? An end to all the travesty." Then a jumpy Afrobeat inspired rhythm gets sliced by some clanging guitar strikes. They only made 99 copies of this, so you'd better snap one up quick.

This review was written for Que Vida 2

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