Music, Style & Culture

| Magazine : Online : Radio : Mobile

The Do - A Mouthful

Olivia tells us about all fifteen tracks on the band's debut album.

Paris-based duo The Do released their debut album 'A Mouthful' in France last year, with it becoming the first French record sang in English to ever reach number one, and over here in May, to great reviews.

Olivia tells us about all fifteen tracks on the album, from their 'lucky track' to the one that started off 'as a joke'.

1. 'Playground Hustle'
One of the first tracks we wrote together just for ourselves, not for another project. We wanted an anthem, but not a very serious one. They're not kids' voices you hear there, it's me trying to embody a choir of boys and girls. Dan gave me the beat, i recorded the vocals and some twisted guitar and percussions, gave it back to Dan... We wanted it to be the first track of the album, it seemed like the best introduction because it is so free.

2. 'At Last'
This is more of a conventional song, with a proper structure and a real guitar riff. In the beginning i thought it sounded like a song from the Jackson Five. It deals with devotion, about letting go of everything for one person, for one love, which can also be devastating. It is weet and sour, falsely happy.

3. 'On my Shoulders'
Our lucky track! Funny because this one wasnt so popular on our myspace page at first. Then it became our single and it played a lot on radios. Yet another song about blind devotion, it is so extreme that it is no longer
about love, more about self-denial.

4. 'Song For Lovers'
We love this one, but we never really played it live, probably cos it is so delicate and intimate, it didnt quite fit with the others. I wrote the lyrics at my cottage in the forest in Finland. It is a poem about the birth and death of a love story.

5. 'The Bridge Is Broken'
One of our favourites... this one was originally written for a contemporary ballet. We released the music we did for that play, sold it after the show, it was our first ep as "The Do". My voice is pretty annoying on this song, but it somehow serves the purpose perfectly.

6. 'Stay (Just A Little Bit More)'
This song is amazing because no matter where we play it live, and whether the crowd knows us or not, they sing along to it. It is a beautiful thing, though it's a story about a lousy shag!

7. 'Unissasi Laulelet'
For this one the melody came out naturally in Finnish. It is pretty typical, like a folk tale. I grew up in France but all the music I listened to as a child we in Finnish or English. My mum used to sing to me in Finnish a lot too.

8. 'Tammie'
We must have tried three different arrangements on this song... it was a difficult one. We eventually stripped it down, simplified it a lot and it worked better. It still gets quite powerful on stage, but it's fun.

9. 'Queen Dot Kong'
Just a joke song, me trying to rap... We're both hiphop fans, we did our own gypsy version. It's a great one live!

10. 'Coda'
An instrumental sequel of QdK... We wanted to have tracks with no vocals too.

11. 'Searching Gold'
This song is very dear to us, though it has remained unknown compared to the rest of the songs. It is about greed and twisted relationships.

12. 'When Was I Last Home?'
A very poetic tune about being alone and far from home... it made a lot of sense when we were on tour.

13. 'Travel Light'
We like to play a very different, lo-fi version of this song live. It is one of the last songs we recorded.

14. 'Aha'
At first this one was almost a rockabilly type of song, that we composed when we started to rehearse for our first gigs. I had just bought my fender and Dan bought a bass, we'd never played before. We screamed and played loud, like teenagers starting be a rockband... after months of studio work it felt cathartic.

15. 'In My Box'
We wanted an outro, with no proper lyrics, but when you listen carefully you could hear something like "aaa beat them all". These instrumental tracks were important to us because we'd been writing so much for dance and movies.